Project management factors affecting the enterprise resource planning projects’ performance in Jordan
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JSIT-03-2016-0020 |
| Published date | 08 August 2016 |
| Date | 08 August 2016 |
| Pages | 230-254 |
| Author | Ruba Abu-Hussein,Mohammed Hyassat,Rateb Sweis,Afnan Alawneh,Mutaz Al-Debei |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information systems,Information & communications technology |
Project management factors
affecting the enterprise resource
planning projects’ performance
in Jordan
Ruba Abu-Hussein
Department of Business Administration, The University of Jordan,
Amman, Jordan
Mohammed Hyassat
Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Jordan,
Amman, Jordan
Rateb Sweis and Afnan Alawneh
Department of Business Administration, The University of Jordan,
Amman, Jordan, and
Mutaz Al-Debei
Department of Information Management Systems,
The University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan
Abstract
Purpose – This purpose of this research is to investigate the project management factors that are affecting
the enterprise resource planning (ERP) projects’ performance in Jordan. Based on the conducted literature
review, four project management areas were selected for this research: the communication management, the
human resource management, the time management and the risk management.
Design/methodology/approach – In total, 24 Jordanian ERP projects were surveyed through
designing a questionnaire that was distributed to project managers. Moreover, interviews were
conducted with both the project manager of the largest ERP project in Jordan and a consultant of one of
the Big 5 consulting rms.
Findings – The interviews’ results conrmed the effect of the four project management areas on the ERP
project performance which is consistent with the questionnaire results except for the risk management.
Originality/value – No similar studies were found in Jordan. Moreover, this subject was tackled by
only a few studies, so more research is recommended to investigate the project management factors that
are affecting the ERP projects’ performance. It is also recommended that future studies extend this
research on factors other than project management factors.
Keywords Human resource management, Risk management, Project management,
Time management, Communication management, ERP projects
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Recently, enterprise resource planning (ERP) has become one of the most signicant and
sometimes very urgent needs for many business disciplines, even for the IT sector in which
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/1328-7265.htm
JSIT
18,3
230
Received 13 March 2016
Revised 19 May 2016
Accepted 20 May 2016
Journalof Systems and
InformationTechnology
Vol.18 No. 3, 2016
pp.230-254
©Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1328-7265
DOI 10.1108/JSIT-03-2016-0020
it has been found that the development of any software suffers the challenge of managerial
issues more than technical one (Beatty and Williams, 2006;Ara and Al-Mudimigh, 2011;
Tingting and Kazuhiko, 2016). Thus, project management is an important requirement in
implementing ERP systems and in achieving three challenging, competing and interrelated
goals listed by Bhatti (2005) as scope, time and cost. These goals should be met from a project
management perspective. The purpose of this research is to investigate the project
management factors that affect the ERP projects’ performance in Jordan.
Most previous studies were dedicated to key ERP implementation factors, including
data accuracy, level of customization, top management support and team
empowerment. These factors have recently received high attention in information
technology (IT) projects. At the same time, there was lack of research on project
management activities related to ERP projects, especially in the Middle East region.
What distinguishes this study from the previous studies is that it focuses on four project
management factors in Jordan and to what extent they affect the implementation of ERP
in the chosen companies.
On the other hand, the uniqueness of the Middle East region plays a signicant role
in differentiating this study from others, as Jordanian companies – along with other
companies in the region, which are implementing ERP projects – have started to
recognize the importance of investing in IT and in automating their major processes,
giving momentum to this study for justifying –or maybe not – these investments.
Jordan was chosen because this country, like other developing countries, is a
middle-income country with limited natural resources Moreover, it faces serious
challenges in IT projects, especially ERP projects.
This study starts by investigating project management factors affecting ERP
projects based on the conducted literature review and ends with an analysis and
investigation of these factors on ERP projects in Jordan.
2. Literature review
2.1 Enterprise resource planning projects in developing countries
What makes the projects that implements ERP different from others is the method of
implementing the project processes in many areas including the scale, complexity, users’
participation and cost (Ziemba and Oblak, 2013). Furthermore, ERP projects’ implementations
are complex and risky; the risks in such projects can be mitigated through many ways such as
communicating with and involving stakeholders, as well as good project management; the
most important point to be considered includes the barriers in communication channels
through implementing projects, as it can limit the development of knowledge and make it
difcult to develop ERP projects, because of the gap between the needs of the stakeholders and
what is available in the organizations (Bearing Point, 2004;Andersson, 2016). Ram et al. (2013)
has found that perceived system quality is a critical antecedent for ERP implementation to
guarantee the desired quality and achieve goals.
It is necessary to study ERP implementation in developing countries, especially that
most ERP studies are related to developed countries. These countries are trying to
change their traditional information systems to new information systems like
management information system and ERP, so their expenditure on the ERP is growing;
however, the failure rates continue to block the delivery of ERP benets. Moreover, the
developing countries have their unique implementation challenges (Kamhawi, 2008;
Hawari and Heeks, 2010;Moohebat et al., 2011;Amid et al., 2012).
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Project
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factors
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