Strategic Information Management Challenges and strategies in managing information systems Third edition

Conclusion

There are several ways out of the IT productivity paradox. Several of the more

critical relate to improved ways of planning for, managing and using IT/IS.

However, part of the IT productivity paradox has been configured out of

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difficulties and limitations in measuring and accounting for IT/IS perform-

ance. Bringing the so-called paradox into the more manageable and assessable

organizational realm, it is clear that there is still, as at 1996, much indifferent

IT/IS evaluation practice to be found in work organizations. In detailing an

integrated lifecycle approach to IT/IS evaluation we have utilized the research

findings of ourselves and others to suggest one way forward. The ‘cradle to

grave’ framework is holistic and dynamic and relies on a judicious mixture of

‘the business case’, appropriate criteria and metrics, managerial and

stakeholder judgement and processes, together with motivated evaluators.

Above all it signals a move from ‘control through numbers’ assessment

culture to one focused on quality improvement. This would seem to offer one

of the better routes out of the productivity paradox, not least in its ability to

link up evaluation to improving approaches to planning for, managing and

using IT. As such it may also serve to begin to demystify the ‘IT productivity

paradox’, and reveal that it is as much about human as technology issues – and

better cast anyway as the IT-management productivity paradox, perhaps?