Organizations invest heavily in IT, but often the new technology fails
to provide the expected ROI. I'm looking for data that shows the top
reasons why the expected ROI fails to materialize.  In particular, I'm
most interested in the human factors (individual and group) that
impede full ROI (e.g., politics, lack of executive alignment, poor
training on the new technology being deployed, poor communication of
the changes).

Google - barriers to ROI in IT


Bbajinmi -

Excellent question; one worthy of every IT management discussion! 

You'll find that a company called The Standish Group, a research and
analysis company in West Yarmouth, MA, is often mentioned in analyses
of IT project issues.  They've specialized in what causes projects to
fail, starting with a seminal report called "The CHAOS Report (1994)".
 You'll find the report at the company's URL below but also at several
academic websites:
The Standish Group
"The CHAOS Chronicles" (1994)
http://www.standishgroup.com/sample_research/chaos_1994_1.php

As successful research is likely to do, Standish Group has turned this
into an on-going business and now conducts continuous research.  The
most-recent version of the report, CHAOS Chronicles Version 3.0, says
that data now covers 40,000 completed IT projects.  The summary of the
report indicates that leading causes of issues in success or failure
are:
* level and type of user involvement
* level of executive management support
* experience of project management
* scope of work
* the requirements or definition process
* appropriate software infrastructure
* methodology in planning project
* estimating cost and time for the project
* staffing - particularly retention
* project management tools, including quality and testing
The Standish Group
"CHAOS Chronicles 3.0 - Introduction" (2003)
http://www.standishgroup.com/chaos/intro1.php

The original 1994 report was a higher-level look at why projects
failed.  It should be noted that the participants felt that they were
better off than they were in 1989 - but projects were still failing at
too high a rate.  Reasons for failure cited were:
1. restarts of projects
2. cost and time overruns
3. projects missing 25-50% of the features required

There's substantial detail on more reasons behind those failures in
the 1994 link above.  Note too that the consulting company has a
weekly newsletter covering project management topics:
Virtual Beacon 
http://www.standishgroup.com/chaos/beacon.php

Others have followed up on the Standish research, including a recent
book by Catherine Benko and Warren McFarlan, "Connecting the Dots:
Aligning Projects with Objectives in Unpredictable Times" (Harvard
Business Press, 2003).  This summary article by the authors argues
that major investments should be broken into incremental projects that
can be run serially.  It uses research from the Standish Group that
notes that larger teams and longer duration projects have higher
failure rates.  The Standish Group research notes that projects with a
6 person team with 6-month timeframe have a 55% success rate.  A
250-person team with project length of 24 months has only an 8%
success rate.
CIO.com
"Reducing Risk by Managing Chunks" (April 1, 2003)
http://www.cio.com/archive/040103/book.html

Reasons for failure often come down to perspective.  Changing the
culture by learning how to deliver successful projects is a key
attribute, says Richard Heroux, the project manager for the Securities
& Exchange Commission's EDGAR project
CIO.com
"Overcoming Skepticism"  (Feb. 5, 2003)
http://www2.cio.com/ask/source/2003/questions/question1581.html?DATE=2003


On a separate tack, security-related investments have risen
dramatically in IT since September 11, 2001.  But two problems remain
for IT managers: first defining what real losses are.  Second: how do
you measure ROI on security spending that's essentially insurance.

This one discusses measuring real losses, asking what did the hacking
of a server at a major NY financial services firm cost?  "All told
$50,000. But when asked how he came up with that number, he said he
honestly couldn't say. Because he really wasn't sure," notes CSO
Magazine:
CSO Magazine 
"It's Not Easy Being Breached" (December, 2002) 
http://www.csoonline.com/read/120902/cost.html 
 
On ROI, "This elusive packaging of the ROI formula
to validate our existence is one that may take us down an endless
path," says Tina LaCroix, chief of information security at Aon Corp.
CSOonline.com:
"Calculated Risk" (December, 2002) 
http://www.csoonline.com/read/120902/calculate.html 


Google search strategy:
This is a pretty broad topic with lots of contributors to
lower-than-expected ROI.  So to try to shortcut it, I went to several
excellent online sources of information on IT topics and tried site
searches there first, knowing that articles would provide pointers to
knowledgeable resources:
CIO.com, csoonline.com

You may find these CIO.com pages to be a good resource on a range of
topics related to project ROI:
IT Value Management Center
http://www.cio.com/research/itvalue/

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

Great job!  I'll definitely use this service again!