From Information Technology Projects to Digital Transformation Programs: Research Pathways

I was pleased to compose this special issue at the behest of Dr. Gary Klein, a recently retired co-editor-in-chief of Project Management Journal (PMJ) and Couger Professor of Information Systems at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. The idea behind collecting articles for this issue was to show the associations between project and program studies and information system research. The included articles are the products of Gary’s coauthors, colleagues, students, and friends and represent research paths that cross frequently and merge occasionally. I’ll introduce these articles at the end of this editorial, but first I will fulfill a request to describe the current information technology (IT) practice of digital transformation (DT) and how research addresses aspects of DT. DT introduces digital technology into the existing enterprise management structure to promote a systematic remodeling of information structures, management methods, operating mechanisms, and production processes, all of which objectively require enterprises to break with traditional industrialized management. DT changes the original logic of enterprise management thinking and drives enterprise production management to become more intelligent; enterprise marketing management to be more precise; and enterprise resource management to be more efficient, thus bringing about disruptive innovations in management paradigms and management systems. DT evolved from early systems providing data support of operations toward enablement of organizational strategy—from collecting and reporting information toward capitalizing on emerging technology that modifies or realizes strategic intent. While organizations managed early system developments as projects, DTs are too massive and complex, requiring a programmanagement approach (Davies & Kopcho, 2021). Research on managing IT initiatives parallels that evolution, initially striving to overcome high rates of IT implementation failure but lately more focused on concerns that 70% of DTs fail to achieve promised results (Forth et al., 2020). I’ll present a little about DT program management based on limited studies and early results from our ongoing studies of the Midea Group.