How to Turn Around a Failing ERP Implementation: Project Management Routines as Boundary Objects

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are very challenging and expensive to implement and past research recognizes that these projects continue to suffer from high failure rates. While the factors that contribute to these failures have been extensively examined, we know little about how to turn failing projects around. In response, this research presents a study of a failing ERP implementation project that was successfully turned around over a twelve-month period. Adapting theory of sensemaking through boundary objects, we explain how a new project manager helped the team members share their individual perspectives on the problematic situation and together develop new directions through mindful enactment of project management routines. As a result, we offer a detailed empirical account of the ERP project turnaround; practical lessons managers can use to intervene into failing ERP projects; and, a theoretical model of how project management routines as boundary objects can help participants make sense of cooperative work in the absence of consensus.