Focus Issue on Legacy Information Systems and Business Process Change:The Role of Stakeholders in Managing Change

Abstract

To manage organisational change in the context of legacy information systems, which may need replacement or revision, the strategy process should respond to corporate opportunity rather than past internal difficulties. Steering groups are often used to guide the strategy process. An important problem is the identification of appropriate stakeholders that need to be represented on the steering group. A related problem is to establish the boundary of the new information system. Computer Information Systems development often focuses on direct users and affected internal departments as the exclusive stakeholders. However these groups may present too narrow a perspective. To improve the effectiveness of the development process, a wider constituency should be considered that includes organisational partners in the wider business environment. This paper presents a method, the stakeholder web, that identifies appropriate stakeholders and their viewpoints. It illustrates the concepts with a large-scale university information systems project. The stakeholder web is used to analyse the relationships between the activities and membership of a university information systems steering group over a five-year period. The results demonstrate the dynamic nature of the project and the associated changes in membership of the steering group.