Implementation of Information System Methodology in Malaysian Organizations and Their Causes of Failure

Implementation of Information System Methodology in Malaysian Organizations and Their Causes of Failure

Abstract

Before the Information era, most organizations in Malaysia get away or do well with only five major functions or departments; Finance, Human Resource, Operation, Sales & Marketing and the Management. However, nowadays, Information Technology (IT) is considered to be one of the major functions in an organization.

This is mainly because many operational issues can be solved and processes can be improved by implementing Information System Methodology. Thus, help the organization gain the competitive advantage.

In general, Information System Methodology is viewed as a problem solving process to solve mainly ill-structured processes in an organization.

Some Information System Methodology examples are the standard Waterfall Model, Rapid Application Development (RAD), Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Agile Methodologies and Object Oriented Analysis and Design (OOAD).

However, with the many methodologies to choose from, this does not guarantee success in any IT project implementation. In fact many IT projects are more likely to fail.

Many factors contribute to this failure, and some of them lay within the implementation of Information System Methodology. In this article, we will look into these factors as a future reference to counter measure, control, manage and improve the success rate to implement an Information System Methodology and hence improve the success rate of implementing an IT project.

Keywords: Methodology, Information System Methodology, IT project, IT project failure, Information System Methodology failure.

Introduction

We now know the importance of information system in an organization. Whether it is an abandoned Information System project or errors in the information system itself, both contribute to some billions of ringgit lost in Malaysia.

In 2004, UK Inland Revenue lost USD 3.45 billion tax-credit overpayment due to software errors, Ford Motor Co. lost approximately USD 400 million when the purchasing system project were abandoned, Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) lost USD 160 million due to some problems with their ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system.

In fact, according to Cortex statistic, only nearly 20% of IT projects are satisfactory and most IT projects are likely to be unsuccessful.

Before we dwell into the causes of this failure, let us see the relations between information system and methodology in an organization.

Thousands of "information transactions" are made each day in an organization.