Moving IS evaluation forward: learning themes and research issues

Value for IT money has been and is an issue. There is concern that poor evaluation procedures mean it is difficult to select projects for investment, to control development and to measure business return after implementation. This concern has been matched by increased activity in researching IT evaluation. The purpose of this paper is to consider what is now needed to make further progress. We do this by drawing together diverse findings from three major research projects, conducted by the authors between 1989 and 1998, in the context of the literature. We suggest five "learning themes", concepts which we believe would better inform future research and practice. These are: more extensive use of the theory of evaluation as a frame for classifying present prescriptions and discovering new ones; closer attention to multiple relationships among stakeholders; the development of more complex models of decision making; more emphasis on "whole life" studies of project dynamics and, finally, further exploration of the role of evaluation in management learning. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.