In this scenario, most development efforts in the field of Information Systems are
overshadowed by organizational dissatisfaction and schedule and cost overruns resulting in
project abandonment and failure. The following quote from a UN report (Gilhooly, 2005, p.
25), mentioning Least Developed Countries (LDC), sums up the severity of the situation:
Failure to urgently and meaningfully exploit the available means to bridge the digital divide
may consign many developing countries, particularly LDCs, to harmful and even permanent
exclusion from the network revolution.
In this chapter, our focus is Information System Development Project (ISDP) failure from
the perspective of a developing country. Learning from an ISDP failure plays a key role in
the long-term success of any organization desirous of continuous improvement via evaluation
and monitoring of its information systems development efforts. The ???learning from
failure??? factor assumes a higher level of significance in the context of developing countries.
In developing countries it is very important that the scarce resources are optimally utilized
in such a way that the probability of failure is minimized. This study reports on a seemingly
simple (but only deceptively so) failed ISDP to inform the reader about the various complexities
involved in information systems development projects in general and in developing
countries in particular.
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