E-commerce project development risks: evidence from a Delphi survey

This paper reports on a study to determine the opinion of expert practitioners of the most important risks in the development of e-commerce projects. The 32 respondents in the final round of the survey were mainly project managers from South African software houses. Various academics and users of e-commerce systems also contributed to the survey. The Delphi technique was used to gather the data and to rank the risks. Misunderstanding the users' requirements emerged as the most significant risk, followed by the absence of declared business benefits. As with conventional systems, there is a risk of top management not getting totally committed to the project, very often giving verbal encouragement to the IT team but overlooking the impact on the business as a whole. Respondents place a high importance on the security issues surrounding e-commerce projects. Transactions are subjected to more threats, and developers have to incorporate procedures to ensure transaction integrity and confidentiality, and then convince potential customers of the system's security. Other related issues include transaction tracability and database security and integrity. Hype in the market suggested that there was a large risk of delivering systems too slowly as a result of "cumbersome" methodologies. The research did not find this to be the case. Different perspectives emerged from the viewpoints of developers, project managers, clients/users and academics. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.