A Comparative Analysis of Risk Management Frameworks in Enterprise IT Projects

Abstract

Enterprise IT projects are becoming a key part of organizational strategy, and are very prone to uncertainty due to the complexity of technology, interdependence within organizations, and governance issues. Risk management is thus an important factor in enhancing the performance of the project, and balancing it with enterprise goals. This paper conducts a comparative study of the key risk management models that are implemented in the context of enterprise IT projects, their principles, structural elements, and applicability. The analysis compares project-based, enterprise-based, governance-based, and knowledge-based risk management strategies on major dimensions, which include coverage of risk, method of risk assessment, and alignment to organizational governance and the flexibility to the different degrees of project complexity. Its results show that whereas project-level frameworks are both operationally clear and responsive, they tend to be strategically disjointed at the enterprise level. On the other hand, enterprise-wide models offer the benefit of high levels of governance congruency, but can lack project-level fine-grainedness. The paper brings out the importance of hybridized risk management strategies to combine both enterprise governance arrangements and project level tooling and organizational learning systems. These types of integrated frameworks are demonstrated to be more effective when it comes to handling the multidimensional risks of the complex enterprise IT projects. The article adds to the discussion in the academic and managerial literature by providing a systematic comparative approach to informing the choice of frameworks and situational adaptation in the practice of IT risk management on an enterprise level.