Abstract:
Organizations are continuously introducing information system (IS) projects and every new IS is a large investment. It is very crucial to smoothly get the best out of these systems by ensuring that they succeed. According to Lyytinen & Hirschheim, (2010) unfortunately the percentage of failure compared to success is very high. Therefore Information System Planning (ISP) has a significant effect on the quality and effectiveness of any information system Implementation (ISI) process. The main objective of the study was to find the effectiveness of ISI processes and how this was affected by ISP. The researcher used census sampling in selecting the entire population of universities and university campuses in Kisii County. The study adopted a descriptive survey where quantitative data from questionnaires was used for analysis purposes. The researcher also adopted both purposive and cluster sampling design in sampling respondents in these institutions. The findings reflect the perception of 125 respondents; 100 system managers out of 114 and 25 system users out of 33. Data was presented in tallies, frequency distribution and analyzed using a Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 12.0. The r values were established as .814 and .954 for system users and system managers respectively and this represented the actual correlation value in the population hence the researcher was meant to believe there was a very strong positive relationship between ISI and ISP. It was established that there was minimal planning prior to the implementation and study confirms the general notions that IS projects face a lot of challenges and often fail in one way or another due to poor planning. It was noted that best practices and above all the practical methods are still being developed. It is further concluded that it is important to practice ISP by aligning both organizational, business and Information system strategy in IS projects implementation process. A notable part of IS projects issues were related to user acceptance, ways of handling challenges and application of critical success factors as ISI components. It was further established that few information technology professionals were familiar enough with the concept and methods of organizational change management which was part of the user acceptance. Recommendations formulated were aimed at enhancing both users’ and managers’ organizational satisfaction in Institutions of Higher Learning (IHL). The importance of finding management commitment and knowledge of best practices were also highlighted in this study. This study will be helpful to both organizations which have implemented or are in the process of implementing IS projects together with researchers for further comparative study elsewhere.
