Process mining for IS project success factors management: a proposal

Abstract

Research on Success Factors (SF) of Information Systems (IS) projects carried out over the last decades has resulted in a vast literature. However, extant studies typically aim to identify and list generic SF for projects, denoting a static perspective, with few concerns of practical nature regarding their use as management tools to support decisions throughout the projects’ lifecycle. On the other hand, process mining has been used to discover, analyze, and improve project management processes. In this paper, we propose a new approach that involves relating the performance of those processes with SF in IS projects. By using process mining, the aim is to automatically extract and manage SF in projects, measure processes performance, and provide project managers with information on how SF correlate with performance. This will provide managers with enhanced information regarding status and improvement opportunities for current and future projects. The main purpose is to contribute to the project management theory and practice by providing a decision support system that can associate performance with IS projects’ SF automatically obtained from internal and external data sources.