IT Project Planning based on Business Value Generation

In this chapter the authors investigate the management of service innovation projects; can ICT based service innovation be facilitated by traditional project management thinking? Or should the initiators strive for more interaction with users and other stakeholders, thus organizing the initiatives much looser than what the traditional project work method allows for? Building on a large survey, the authors found that ICT based service innovation was not associated with a tightly run project – focused on cost, time and quality; nor with the presence of a professional project manager. Rather, successful service innovation was found in projects where the service providing organization and the users of the forthcoming services were well integrated in the project. They discuss three alternatives to the traditional project work form model, called Integrated Classic Structure, Mutual Adaptation and TQM, and assess their potential strengths and weaknesses in service innovation, as an agenda for further experimentation and empirical research.