An Evolutionary Perspective on Control in IS Development Projects

Projects in the field of Information Systems Development (ISD) are particularly prone to failure because they are complex in many respects. To increase success of ISD projects, researchers and practitioners usually recommend the implementation of control. The traditional view on control involves two parties: a controller executing control and one or more controllees being controlled. To better understand why control effectiveness has not significantly improved over the last decades, this paper gives a chronological overview of existing literature on ISD project control. We find that so far, research has been strongly focusing on controller related aspects such as the creation of control portfolios. This, however, neglects that the effectiveness of control is highly dependent on the controllees’ perception and willingness to actively commit to implemented controls. We argue that a more holistic understanding of the controllee perspective on control is needed and discuss implications for theory and practice.