Determining the Contribution of IS Projects: An Approach to Measure Performance

The paper provides a technique to measure the performance of information systems (IS) projects. Several researchers and practitioners have noted that the traditional system of measures (i.e. conformance to time, cost and specifications objectives) are incomplete and as such do not provide an effective means for assessing the performance of many IS projects. We argue that using the stakeholders' views on what is important to them in a project is a sound basis to derive measurements. In this paper we provide a structured framework for determining project performance measures that are based on stakeholders' objectives with regards to the project. This framework is supported by two well-established techniques: Value Focused Thinking (VFT) and Goal Question Metric (GQM).