Information Technology Projects System Development Life Cycles

This chapter uses the Diffusion of Innovations (DOI) theory and examines a business case, highlighting certain gaps in the theory. First, confusion can be present between the innovation construct (in this instance, replacing the enterprise systems) and the diffusion construct (that is, selling that innovation to upper management). Second, the business case has never been examined in diffusion research. Research about business cases generally focuses on techniques such as Discounted Cash Flows and Total Cost of Ownership. Third, although a good business case can lead to successful innovation, it should not influence upper management to be overly positive or too cautious. One extreme leads to over-commitment. The other extreme leads to under-commitment or upper management’s inability to commit. Both extremes have unexpected and undesirable consequences. This single-case study examined a business case. The data included in the triangulation are observations, in-depth interviews, and archival documents. The analysis of a business case document was done with the ATLAS.ti v5.0 software. It is hoped that understanding a “real world” business case will give the academics insights on the relationship between the innovation and its diffusion as well as teach the practitioners the caveats of a business case.