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1. Introduction
Recently, enterprise resource planning (ERP) has become one of the most significant and sometimes very urgent needs for many business disciplines, even for the IT sector in which it has been found that the development of any software suffers the challenge of managerial issues more than technical one (Beatty and Williams, 2006; Ara and Al-Mudimigh, 2011; Tingting and Kazuhiko, 2016). Thus, project management is an important requirement in implementing ERP systems and in achieving three challenging, competing and interrelated goals listed by Bhatti (2005) as scope, time and cost. These goals should be met from a project management perspective. The purpose of this research is to investigate the project management factors that affect the ERP projects’ performance in Jordan.
Most previous studies were dedicated to key ERP implementation factors, including data accuracy, level of customization, top management support and team empowerment. These factors have recently received high attention in information technology (IT) projects. At the same time, there was lack of research on project management activities related to ERP projects, especially in the Middle East region. What distinguishes this study from the previous studies is that it focuses on four project management factors in Jordan and to what extent they affect the implementation of ERP in the chosen companies.
On the other hand, the uniqueness of the Middle East region plays a significant role in differentiating this study from others, as Jordanian companies – along with other companies in the region, which are implementing ERP projects – have started to recognize the importance of investing in IT and in automating their major processes, giving momentum to this study for justifying –or maybe not – these investments.
Jordan was chosen because this country, like other developing countries, is a middle-income country with limited natural resources Moreover, it faces serious challenges in IT projects, especially ERP projects.
This study starts by investigating project management factors affecting ERP projects based on the conducted literature review and ends with an analysis and investigation of these factors on ERP projects in Jordan.
2. Literature review
2.1 Enterprise resource planning projects in developing countries
What makes the projects that implements ERP different from others is the method of implementing the project processes in many areas including the scale, complexity,...