On Information Systems Project Abandonment: An Exploratory Study of Organizational Practices

Information systems failure is a widely recognized problem in the IS community. However, abandonment of IS projects is an aspect of IS failure that has not gained much attention in either IS practice or research. This article examines the organizational practices resulting in the underlying characteristics of IS project abandonment. The results of a survey show IS project abandonment to be a complex multidimensional issue defying easy explanations. IS projects may be abandoned for any combination of factors including cost overruns and/or schedule slippages, technological inadequacies, and behavioral, political, or organizational issues. The last set of factors emerged as being the most dominant in most companies’ decisions.