Risks must be controlled during the development of a new system in order to best promote success. However, resources that can be dedicated to controlling risks are often limited. To best design an effective and efficient portfolio of controls, it is important to understand if and how risks change during the course of a system development. Using a framework developed from socio-technical theories, we conduct a multiple case study to determine the pattern of risk dynamics through the stages of the development life cycle. Risks associated with structural concerns dominate and increase as the life cycle progress, while technology risks are not very common early, but become so later. Risks associated with tasks and actor are common and do not change much in incidence. The results indicate the value of the socio-technical model in identifying risks and how control portfolios should change over the course of a system development.

Career anchors represent personal desires of employees that must be satisfied in order for organizations to attract and retain good workers. Career stages represent advancements along the paths of employment that an individual can take through an organization or chain of organizations that represent professional growth and increased value to an organization. Though research is prevalent on career anchors and career stage models, works that look at changes in one as the other changes are missing from the literature. Due to that lack, it is usually concluded that anchors reflect changes in careers as Information systems (IS) employees advance through their career stages. However, expectancy-value theory leads us to expect that the causality may be reversed, that career anchors change leading employees to value alternative positions more highly. Drawing on the career changes of 10 IS employees, we examine the changes in anchors through progressive career stages. While technical competence and security anchors are important at all stages of an IS career, managerial competence, geographic security, and autonomy become more important in the latter stages and are often adjusted prior to career movement. Management should account for these changes while designing jobs and incentives, while further research is required to confirm dominant patterns of change.

Information system (IS) managers have long recognised the need to use project management approaches in the design and delivery of their system development projects. The result has been the widespread use of project teams headed by a project leader or manager. However, given the fact that there has been a low success rate for IS projects, there is a growing need to seek out new methods and controls for projects. One approach involves the practice of altering the project environment prior to the commencement of project tasks. To determine whether such pre-project activities may be effective, a model is proposed and tested relating the activities to the performance of the project manager and characteristics of an effective project team. Data from a sample of 186 project team members indicate that the pre-project activities lead to more effective teams and managers and eventually to project success. Thus, it is important that organisations begin work on projects at an earlier stage.