Government IT mega-projects often end in costly failure, despite attempts to identify those Critical Success Factors (CSFs) that lead to project success. This raises questions about whether these CSFs are understood, applied and, if so, whether they are having an impact on the management and subsequent performance of government IT mega-projects. The literature review compared CSFs from the generic and IT project management literature to find that they are broadly similar. CSF frameworks were then assessed to find a measure of the impact of CSFs and a measure of ‘performance’ was also defined. CSFs were then identified from fifteen reports on IT and information infrastructure projects and verified against the CSFs identified in the literature to produce a synthesised list of twelve CSFs. The understanding, application and impact of these CSFs were examined through a case study of the MoD’s Defence Information Infrastructure (DII) Programme, a government IT mega-project to provide a more integrated and coherent Defence infrastructure. It was evident that the CSFs were recognised and they appeared to have been understood within the DII Programme. However, the extent to which they have been applied is variable with differing effect. Therefore, the impact that CSFs have had on the management of the DII Programme is debatable. There were areas where the project could have been managed better and, therefore, could be performing better, suggesting that the overall success of the project is potentially at risk. The overarching conclusion of this study is that, in terms of the management of the DII Programme, the impact of the identified CSFs is variable and, where they are not applied, there is an adverse effect on its performance, suggesting a causal relationship. More generally, not applying generic CSFs to project management is likely to lead to failure, but is unlikely to assure success. Unique projects operating in highly specific and complex contexts require more contingent solutions. As a result of these conclusions, further case studies are suggested, along with further study into government and MoD IT project management and the management of trust in contractual relationships.

The increasing awareness of data mining technology, along with the attendant increase in the capturing, warehousing, and utilization of historical data to support evidence-based decision making, is leading many organizations to recognize that the effective use of data is the key element in the next generation of client-server enterprise information technology. The concept of data mining is gaining acceptance in business as a means of seeking higher profits and lower costs. To deploy data mining projects successfully, organizations need to know the key factors for successful data mining. Implementing emerging information systems (IS) can be risky if the critical success factors (CSFs) have been researched insufficiently or documented inadequately. While numerous studies have listed the advantages and described the data mining process, there is little research on the success factors of data mining. This dissertation identifies CSFs in data mining projects. Chapter 1 introduces the history of the data mining process and states the problems, purposes, and significances of this dissertation. Chapter 2 reviews the literature, discusses general concepts of data mining and data mining project contexts, and reviews general concepts of CSF methodologies. It also describes the identification process for the various CSFs used to develop the research framework. Chapter 3 describes the research framework and methodology, detailing how the CSFs were identified and validated from more than 1,300 articles published on data mining and related topics. The validated CSFs, organized into a research framework using 7 factors, generate the research questions and hypotheses. Chapter 4 presents analysis and results, along with the chain of evidence for each research question, the quantitative instrument and survey results. In addition, it discusses how the data were collected and analyzed to answer the research questions. Chapter 5 concludes with a summary of the findings, describing assumptions and limitations and suggesting future research.

Despite the successful application of lean thinking across a wide range of industries, and a number of UK Government funded programmes such as the Construction Lean Improvement Programme and Constructing Excellence, the construction sector lags behind other sectors as highlighted in the Egan Report (1998) and more recently in Sir John Egan’s speech to the House of Commons in 2008 which gave the construction industry “four out of ten – for trying.”This led to the research question: What are the critical success factors for lean construction interventions? The emergence of lean production as a concept and the contributions of its key historic influencers are explored. Differences between construction and manufacturing are compared and discussed, and it is concluded that there is no practical reason why lean production cannot be successfully applied to construction operations. However, the issue of buildings being “rooted-in-place” is a potential barrier to true global competition. Progress was made towards a satisfactory definition of lean construction, a term hitherto ill-defined. Nineteen potential critical success factors (CSF) were identified in a literature review. A pilot study conducted with senior construction staff experienced in lean construction identified a further seven potential critical success factors and discounted three derived from the literature. Face-to-face interviews with thirty-one construction staff that had attempted lean construction interventions were conducted to examine the significance of each factor. Of the interventions, twenty-six were successful and six were failures. Statistical analysis compared the failure and success groups and of a total of twenty-three factors examined, thirteen were critical, two important, seven not critical and one unknown. Some of the most cited lean critical success factors, for example “There must be a crisis”, were shown to be not significantly important for the construction sector. Interdependencies between the statistically significant factors were explored and it was concluded that a wide concern with “getting buy-in” exists. Three factors appeared to possess a greater ability to influence all the others: the capability of management; client influence; and the right facilitator.

<p>Strategic change projects allow companies to align their strategy to the turbulent external environment in today’s marketplace and are therefore crucial for retaining the competitive advantage of the firm. The identification of the critical success factors for these projects has become increasingly important, because of the reported high failure rates in the implementation of such projects. The important role of SMEs for the social and economic development of a country is well-known. However, SMEs as an area of study are not often discussed by researchers and an appropriate set of critical success factors for them is lacking. Therefore, it is vital to identify the critical success factors for the implementation of strategic change projects in SMEs to ensure the success of their efforts.</p><p>This study, which seeks to determine the critical success factors for the implementation of strategic change projects within the context of SMEs makes use of a multiple-case study strategy. The cases are based in two companies where semi-structured interviews were conducted in order to obtain the primary data required. The information retrieved from the selected cases was analysed using a qualitative approach. For the elaboration of the conclusion, an iterative process was followed, moving from the data collected, to the theoretical background and to the development of theory.</p><p>At the end of the study it was possible to identify a set of eleven critical success factors that answers the research question of this thesis. In addition, a conceptual model was derived from the theoretical and empirical studies of this work, outlining three dimensions that are considered to influence strategic change project success in the SME-setting. The present study would be beneficial to the practitioners of SMEs as the identified set of critical success factors can be used as a checklist of points to concentrate on when implementing strategic change projects. This will assist them in ensuring that the crucial factors and issues are addressed during implementation. For academics, the study contributes new knowledge to the field and offers a common language for discussing the critical success factors of strategic change projects in SMEs.</p>

In many public sector organisations, the use of Information Technology (IT) has become important for sustaining and extending public service delivery. This has caused there to be a critical dependency on IT, which calls for a specific focus on effective IT governance. Accordingly, the success factors for effective IT governance must be determined and adhered to if an organisation wishes to increase the contribution of IT towards achieving its objectives. Much research has been carried out on IT governance effectiveness and the necessary success factors, but not with a focus on organisations from a developing country such as Tanzania. The context in these organisations is characterised by IT resources, knowledge and culture constraints as well as by an increasing level of IT investment and applications. In this research, we analyse how IT governance practices are implemented in Tanzanian public sector organisations (TaPSOs) and benchmark their levels of maturity. Furthermore, we analyse and identify the critical success factors (CSFs) that contribute to effective IT governance in TaPSOs. Subsequently, we analyse the effects of these CSFs on IT governance performance and develop and evaluate a CSFs framework for implementing effective IT governance in TaPSOs. We find weak IT governance practices, especially in terms of processes. This was also pointed out by the lower level of IT governance maturity in TaPSOs in contrast to public sector organisations in developed countries. Furthermore, we find that the identified CSFs have a significant effect on IT governance performance in TaPSOs. In addition, the designed CSFs framework is found to be important for providing guidelines to be used by IT and business management personnel for implementing effective IT governance. This CSFs framework for implementing effective IT governance in TaPSOs consists of the IT governance focus areas, CSFs, activities, roles, IT resources and environment in which it should be implemented. In contrast to existing frameworks from the research literature, the designed CSFs framework offers a holistic view by focusing on the five IT governance focus areas.

Background:  As enterprises focus on their core competence, outsourcing other activities other firms can do better, the necessity of managing supplier relationships and upgrading the inter-firm relationships become evident. Supplier development as a potential attempt, tries to fill the gap between ideal criteria and the particular suppliers’ actual capabilities and performance in the supply chain. The buying firms initiate the supplier development efforts in order to increase their abilities to create and deliver a superior value to their own customers. In this respect, it is essential to investigate the practices and story of what the buyer and the supplier do in relation to supplier development and what factors contribute to the success of the program and benefits of the dyad. Furthermore, acknowledgment of difficulties that might bring failure in the SD should be taken into consideration so as to possibly avoid them. The supplier development is widely neglected a dyadic view in literature review. The importance of this study is adding the supplier’s standpoint to the buyer’s view in order to achieve the dyadic perspective associated with the practices, the success factors and the barriers. Purpose: This research aims to identify and describe the practices of supplier development in buyer-supplier dyads. The success factors of the supplier development program and the barriers to the supplier development programs are also investigated based on the buying and supplying firms’ perspectives. The main goal is to contribute to a better understanding of the supplier development from a dyadic standpoint. Method: This study is conducted from an interpretivism standpoint with the use of a deductive approach and qualitative strategy. A holistic multiple-case study of two plastic manufacturing firms as the buyers and their three main suppliers (three dyads) is applied in Iran. The empirical data is gathered via 6 different semi-structured interviews. The empirical evidence is analyzed by using within-case, cross-case and pattern matching analysis. The study considers the ethical issues; harm to participant, informed consents, invasion privacy and deception. The research quality is based upon trustworthiness and authenticity.   Result, conclusion: Thanks to within-case analysis which generates the dyadic view with respect to practices, success factors and barriers to supplier development, amazing result is achieved that rarely mentioned by the previous research. A number of conflicting views between the buying firm and the supplier is found due to dyadic investigation which demonstrates the gaps between the buyer and supplier’s perceptions in dyadic relationship. The dyads are simultaneously involved in both direct and indirect supplier development practices. Based on the level of buying firm’s involvement in supplier development activities, the dyads partially follow the degree of sequence from low, moderate to high involvement levels. Each dyad can eliminate or keep the lower level of buyer’s involvement activities when they start the moderate and high level of buyer’s involvement practices. However, the specific position cannot be identified for a particular dyad and the supplier development activities are scattered in all three levels. Based on the dyadic standpoint, the factors that contribute to success of the supplier development program in each dyad can be seen as buyer-, supplier-specific and interface success factors. In this regards, this dyadic multiple-case study confirms the reviewed literature associated with success factors and finds supplier’s top management support and previous supplier development experiences as the additional factors in supplier-specific area that contributes to the successful inter-firm relationship and the supplier development that are not pinpointed by the previous studies. Barriers to the supplier development are factors which hinder the success of the supplier development program. According to the literature review, the barriers could be divided into buyer-, supplier- specific as well as buyer-supplier interface barriers. This study partially confirms the previous studies and reveals some surprising results. One of the most useful findings of the research is that only one barrier in buyer-specific category is verified by one of the dyadic cases. However, in addition to identified barriers, lack of supplier’s top management support and supplier’s indolence are seen as the supplementary supplier-specific barriers to the supplier development. Interestingly, there are other types of barriers that cannot be found in the previous research which is categorized as context barriers. This type includes those kinds of barriers that are originated in the context of relationship in a dyad.

Date of final Seminar: June 8th, 2012 Title: Success factors of entrepreneurial small and medium sized enterprises in Gnosjö municipality Authors:    Johan Eriksson and Muyu Li Group Number: 2898 Supervisor: Michaël Le Duc Examiner: Ole Liljefors Research Question: What important factors affect the success of entrepreneurial SMEs in the Gnosjö municipality? Background: With the economic crisis and recession, the world has begun to take notice of SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises). With an unemployment rate of just 1% and about 1500 companies - most of them successful by almost any definition and with a population of 9500, if there is such a thing as an SME region in Sweden, the Gnosjö municipality is it. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyze some of the factors that influence the success of companies with a special focus on entrepreneurial SMEs in the Gnosjö municipality. Method: The main method of this study is to use primary data in the form of interviews with local company owners or executives, with the interview questions being based on theories generated from the critical literature review. The authors are able to distinguish successful SMEs with an entrepreneurial focus among companies located in the Gnosjö municipality. By utilizing the method of semi-structured interviews, the authors gathered data from a sample of 20 top performing companies. With the theory generated from literature, the authors analyze the primary data, thus being able to find the answer to the research question. Conclusion: There is a relationship between general company success factors and factors driving success for companies in Gnosjö. However, compared to best-in-class, there is definite room for improvement, with regards to company operations as well as to the external factors that affect companies in Gnosjö. Keywords: Gnosjö, definition of entrepreneur, definition of success, success factors. / <p><strong>Acknowledgements</strong></p><p>The authors would like to thank our kind and dedicated supervisor Michaël Le Duc for his aid and assistance in the process of authoring this thesis.</p><p>The authors would also like to thank not only our thesis group colleagues who have provided us with valuable insights and good advice but also the participating companies in the Gnosjö municipality for their kind contributions to the interviews that form the basis of this thesis.</p><p>Finally, the authors would like to thank our beloved family members for their great support throughout the creation of this thesis.</p><p>Without all of you, this thesis could not have been done.</p><p>Thank you all very much!</p><p>Johan Eriksson and Muyu Li</p><p>June 20, 2012</p>

In the telecom manufacturing industry, the business environment is characterized by high competition and challenging tasks. To be able to thrive in this environment, companies have to work hard in order to develop innovations in the form of products, services and solutions to the marketplace. R&amp;D departments, in collaboration with other functional departments and external agents, become the main engine for innovation development. R&amp;D managers face the difficult challenge of effectively managing innovation projects, which are surrounded by high complexity, uncertainty and risk. To help address this issue, this thesis explores four successful innovation projects within four distinct international telecom technology suppliers, namely Nortel, Alvarion, ZTE and ST-Ericsson, to identify the factors that directly influenced the success behind each innovation. To do so, a comprehensive study of the telecom innovation system was conducted; this study enabled the researchers to devise a framework that describes the innovation process in the industry and that highlights the value of the marketing department, the importance of early customer involvement and that clearly demonstrates the self-sufficiency of today’s telecom manufacturing department. Additionally, the study highlights the importance of the human factor and the substantial value of nurturing staff and fostering different roles within the innovation team, such as that of the gatekeeper, entrepreneur, technology specialist and senior manager. R&amp;D management literature lists over 250 different success factors; the framework included in this thesis presents only the 60 factors that are relevant to the industry. These factors are categorized in two ways: (1) As either order winners or order qualifiers and (2) as either being affected or unaffected by the innovation type. The first categorization serves to identify 25 factors that can become a source of competitive advantage if managed accordingly and 35 factors that are considered to be the status quo of the industry, and while very important are not a source of competitive advantage. The second categorization brings awareness to the R&amp;D manager by identifying nine factors, namely: the source of the idea, access to information, the probability of commercial success, the comprehensiveness of the requirements, newness to firm, market strength, innovation receptiveness, degree of innovation and supportive environment. The research showed that these nine factors are directly affected by the innovation type (incremental, architectural or radical).

Title: The implementation of a football certification system - Overcoming barriers and fulfilling success factors associated with the implementation process    Level: Final assignment for Master Degree in Business Administration   Authors: Robert Carlsson &amp; Emil Ring   Supervisor: Jonas Kågström   Date: 2012 – 05   Aim: The aim of this study is to investigate which factors that influence the implementation process regarding a football quality certification system and especially the certification system in Swedish elite football clubs. We will further look into which factors that are perceived as success factors and which factors that are perceived as barriers.   Method: Our study has the starting point from a previous study made by Carlsson (2011), where barriers and success factors in the implementing phase of the Swedish football certification process was investigated. In this study we wish to develop our understanding of different clubs’ experiences of the certification process, we have therefore used a qualitative approach where we have interviewed four clubs’ playing in Allsvenskan (first division in Sweden).   Result &amp; Conclusions: We can conclude that even though the work with the certification system is fairly new for the Swedish elite football clubs, it appears as they have a satisfying insight into the organizational demands’ of the certification system.   One significant success factor identified in the study is the clubs’ attitude towards the system, where positive attitude overcomes the experienced difficulties associated with the process. Other importing factors that have a major impact of the overall result of the process is having the right prerequisites in terms of staff, time and documentation before implementing the certification system in the club.   Contribution of the thesis: This study has contributed to provide an extensive framework of the possible affecting factors when implementing a football specific quality certification system. Further contribution is the identification of two affecting factors not mentioned in the theoretical framework, communication in the establishing phase and geographical location.   Key words: Football certification system, quality improvement, success factors, barriers, implementation process

Strategic change projects allow companies to align their strategy to the turbulent external environment in today’s marketplace and are therefore crucial for retaining the competitive advantage of the firm. The identification of the critical success factors for these projects has become increasingly important, because of the reported high failure rates in the implementation of such projects. The important role of SMEs for the social and economic development of a country is well-known. However, SMEs as an area of study are not often discussed by researchers and an appropriate set of critical success factors for them is lacking. Therefore, it is vital to identify the critical success factors for the implementation of strategic change projects in SMEs to ensure the success of their efforts. This study, which seeks to determine the critical success factors for the implementation of strategic change projects within the context of SMEs makes use of a multiple-case study strategy. The cases are based in two companies where semi-structured interviews were conducted in order to obtain the primary data required. The information retrieved from the selected cases was analysed using a qualitative approach. For the elaboration of the conclusion, an iterative process was followed, moving from the data collected, to the theoretical background and to the development of theory. At the end of the study it was possible to identify a set of eleven critical success factors that answers the research question of this thesis. In addition, a conceptual model was derived from the theoretical and empirical studies of this work, outlining three dimensions that are considered to influence strategic change project success in the SME-setting. The present study would be beneficial to the practitioners of SMEs as the identified set of critical success factors can be used as a checklist of points to concentrate on when implementing strategic change projects. This will assist them in ensuring that the crucial factors and issues are addressed during implementation. For academics, the study contributes new knowledge to the field and offers a common language for discussing the critical success factors of strategic change projects in SMEs.