Senior management support
Without question, previous research has established that
senior management support is critical to the success of any
major IT initiative (for example, [42]; [3]). The involvement
of senior management in this project could also be viewed as
an IT governance issue as it includes leadership, organisational
structures and processes to ensure that the organisation’s IT
sustains and extends the organisation’s strategy [38]. However,
senior management support per se does not ensure successful
implementation but rather it is the extent of their commitment,
or “visible support from the top” as McPhee [25], (p.xv), Auditor
General for the Commonwealth of Australia, put it. This condition
is clearly illustrated in the QH ITIL project. The project was
initially struggling to gain traction as there was limited senior
management support and the appointed process owners lacked
the appropriate authority to deal with issues expeditiously or
provide the needed directions. After senior management provided
support by giving it a new charter and appointing the Manager
of Continuous Improvement, the project gained momentum.
Holland and Light [15] recounted a similar situation with one of
their ERP studies which led the researchers to raise the caution
that in large-scale ERP projects senior management should
understand the magnitude of the implementation and that they
should be prepared to allocate sufficient resources. The warning
is equally applicable to large-scale ITSM projects.