Improving the Impact of Big Data Analytics Projects With Benefits Dependency Networks

Big data analytics is regarded as the next frontier in creating digital opportunities for businesses. Analytics projects rarely deliver the intended benefits for the organisation that invest in these data analytics, and currently, no widely accepted design method for analytics projects exists. To address this, we report from an action research project in an organisation highly involved with big data analytics and how benefits materialize from these projects through the practices of tailored and focused benefits management. We argue for using the benefits dependency network for orchestrating commitment to benefits. Benefits dependency networks create linkages between analytics technology, organisational change activities, stakeholders’ interests and to-be benefits of a project. With this study, we contribute with: (1) a tailored technique for benefits dependency networks, (2) focus on benefits into established project development practices for big data analytics (3) facilitation as a key capability in developing a benefits dependency network.