ABSTRACT
One of the areas where organizations feel the immediacy of the problems with information systems projects is in the relationship between their costs and benefits: they are continually frustrated by the imbalance between this relationship, experiencing high costs, but low return. To understand the dynamics of this conundrum, organizations must:
• place their own IT spending in the context of the wider business community;
• be aware of the consequences of getting the costs and benefits out of balance;
• recognize the pitfalls of justifying information systems projects, especially when trying to justify benefits that are intangible, and hence which cannot be described by financial measures alone; and
• realize that there are many factors that conspire to prevent the benefit returns and productivity improvements from materializing, particularly when no effort is applied to ensuring they are achieved.
