Unit entry changed to reflect changes in content driven by the evolution of risk management theory and practice

At the completion of this subject you should have knowledge and understanding of:

C1. The importance of identifying and managing IT risk in contemporary organisations

C2. The costs of inappropriately identifying and managing risk, resulting in IS/IT failures and systems that fail to deliver value to key stakeholders

C3. Developing strategies for risk management and risk minimisation

C4. The major theories and concepts that have been developed to facilitate the analysis oF IT failures

C5. The relevance of human factors (psycho-social, culture & politics) and organisational factors (complexity, rate of change, global implementations, etc) to risk identification and management

C6. Relationships between the theory and practice of IT risk management

Have developed attitudes which allow you to:

A1. Adopt a critical approach to current orthodoxy on risk identification & management

A2. Appreciate the requirement to appropriately manage IT risk in IT dependent contemporary organisations

• Jordan, E. & Silcock, L. (2005) Beating IT Risks. Chichester, Wiley & Sons (Recommended Text)

• Abdel-Hamid, T.K. & Madnick, S.E. (Fall 1990). The elusive silver lining: how we fail to learn from software development failures. Sloan Management Review. 32 (1): 39-48.
• Corbato, F.J. (1991). On building systems that will fail. Communications of the ACM. 34 (9):72-81.
• Ewusi-Mensah, K. (1997). Critical issues in abandoned information systems development projects. Communications of the ACM. 40(9): 74-80.
• Ewusi-Mensah, K. and Przasnyski, Z.H. (1994). Factors contributing to the abandonment of information systems development projects. Journal of Information Technology. 9(1994): 185-201.
• Flowers, S. (1996). Software failure, management failure. Chichester: Wiley.
• Flowers, S. (1997). Information systems failure: identifying the critical failure factors. Failure & Lessons Learned in Information Technology Management. 1(1997): 19-29.
• Glass, R.L. (1998). Software Runaways: Lessons Learned from Massive Software Project Failures. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.
• Keider, S.P. (1984) Why systems development projects fail. Journal of Information Systems Management. 1 (3): 33-38.
• Keil, M., Cule, P.E., Lyytinen, K. & Schmidt, R.C. (1998). A framework for identifying software project risks. Communications of the ACM. 41(11): 76-83.
• Keil, M. & Robey, D. (2001). Blowing the whistle on troubled software projects. Communications of the ACM. 44(4): 87-93.
• Korac-Boisvert, N. & Kouzmin, A. (1995). Transcending soft-core IT disasters in public sector organizations. Information Infrastructure and Policy 4: 131-161.
• Lyytinen, K. (1988). Expectation failure concept and systems analysts' view of information systems failures: results of an exploratory study. Information & Management. 14 (1988): 45-56.
• Lyytinen, K. & Hirschheim, R. (1987). Information systems failures: a survey and classification of the empirical literature. Oxford Surveys in Information Technology, 4: 257-309.
• Lyytinen, K. & Robey, D. (1999). Learning failure in information system development. Information Systems Journal. 9(2): 85-101.
• Matheson, L.R. & Tarjan, R.E. (1998). Culturally induced information impactedness: a prescription for failure in software ventures. Journal of Management Information Systems. 15(2): 23-29.
• Remenyi, D. (1999). Stop IT project failures through risk management. Oxford, Butterworth: Heinemann.
• Sauer, C. (1993). Why information systems fail: a case study approach. Alfred Waller: Henley-on-Thames.

• Nil

24 credit points of IMS 9000-level units, or equivalent; or 24 credit points of graduate level units in the Master of Information Management and Systems, Master of Information Management and Systems (Professional), Master of Information Technology or the Master of Business Systems, or equivalent; or an approved undergraduate degree in information systems (IS) or information management (IM) or equivalent