Information Technology Evaluation Methods and Management

Citation

Voigt, K. (2001), "Information Technology Evaluation Methods and Management", Online Information Review, Vol. 25 No. 5, pp. 329-337. https://doi.org/10.1108/oir.2001.25.5.329.4

The evaluation of Information Technology (IT) and its business value have recently been the subject of many academic and business discussions. Investments in IT are growing extensively and business managers worry about the fact that the benefits of IT investments might not be as high as expected. This phenomenon is often called the Investment Paradox or the IT Black Hole: large sums are invested in IT that seem to be swallowed by a large black hole without rendering many returns. Getting value from IT and the evaluation of IT is the topic of this book. It encompasses 17 papers on IT evaluation written by academics and practitioners from different countries including: Australia, Belgium, Canada, The Netherlands, South Africa, the UK and the USA.

The different contributors in this book discuss the more traditional methods that focus on financial measures, such as the return on investment, and also a number of alternative evaluation methods and the recently‐introduced measurement and management system, the IT balanced scorecard.

The book is divided into five parts and 17 chapters:

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  Part I: Benefits Realisation describes new approaches in the realisation of benefits through IT.

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  Part II: IT Evaluation Research and Methods reviews the current research in the evaluation of information systems and the methodologies for IT investment evaluation.

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  Part III: Alternative Ways of Traditional IT Evaluation focuses on non‐traditional IT evaluation approaches such as evaluation procedures taking into account organisational properties, the evaluation of IS quality, the evaluation of evolutionary systems, and evaluation by comparing with a framework of informatisation levels.

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  Part IV: Evaluation of New Technologies covers the evaluation of enterprise resource planning projects, and an evaluation approach to strategic electronic commerce decisions.

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  Part V: IT Evaluation Through the Balanced Scorecard rounds out this book on IT evaluation by covering the fairly new IT evaluation approach of the IT balanced scorecard and presents case studies.

This book gives an overview of the different IT evaluation approaches and evaluation methods. Problems concerning the evaluation of IT are detected, evaluation criteria given, and evaluation methods named. No real numeric evaluation example of a company with high IT investments is explicitly given. Evaluation methods have to be seen in context with statistics and mathematics. Papers which treat mathematical and statistical evaluation methods are missing completely. The book focuses mainly on industry, so the current title is misleading, as one might think it also comprises universities, research institutions, libraries, etc. One exception is the article written by Nancy Eickelmann, of NASA, a comparative analysis of the balanced scorecard as applied in government and industry organisations.

The book deals with summarising IT benefits and lists different IT evaluation approaches that are currently being used. It can be recommended for readers who are interested in an overview of current approaches in several countries, bearing in mind that the main focus lies on industry and no real numeric examples are given.