Introduction

Involving top management in IT projects requires that the vendor can convince management that a proposed IT solution meets their real needs. Vendors must convince management that they understand the customer’s business and that their solution fits management’s overall requirements. A simple technique known as ‘problem mapping’ has proved efficient in aligning vendors’ and customers’ interpretations of business needs and potential IT solutions. System consultants from a large international vendor learned to apply this technique of involving managers in the definition of their problems and in the causal relations between business needs and prospective IT solutions.

Top management involvement and the development of strong relationships with top management continue to be reported on as the uttermost important challenge within IT projects. In May 2004 Communications of the ACM stated, based on a survey of 541 IT projects, that when it comes to the complexity of IT projects, the technology aspects are more apparent but the organizational aspects have more significant effects on IT project performance and outcomes: To improve project performance, project managers must develop strong relationships with top management [8]. A similar conclusion was reached in a comprehensive and recent study resulting in an authoritative ranked list of IT projects’ risk factors [5]. The list was based on a Delphi study, where the participants where 45 experienced project managers from US, Europe, and Asia, who have managed in total more than 1.000 IT projects. They identified, analyzed, and ranked experienced project risks. This study confirmed that the lack of top management involvement is the number one challenge that project managers felt was most deserving of their attention.

Top management involvement includes that management undertake sponsorship and ownership throughout the IT project, starting with the initial definition of the project’s purpose and aim. It requires that management sincerely believes that the IT project is business-relevant: They must be convinced that the proposed IT solution solves a relevant problem or supports a true business need.

This article describes how to establish an initial top management involvement by using the problem mapping technique, where management and system consultants openly communicate their understanding of problems, needs, and IT solutions. In the following, the participatory design approach, through which the problem mapping technique is based, is outlined. Then a detailed example is given demonstrating how professional system consultants experienced a problem mapping session, which was used to obtain top management involvement in their suggested IT project.