Exploring Success Factors for IT Carve Out Projects

Carve out projects have recently become an emerging issue in practice and theory given the diversity of strategic foci of companies as well as recent merger and acquisition activities. This paper highlights the relevance of IT in such carve out projects. IT depicts their characteristics and specific features with regard to general IT projects as well as success factors for the management of IT carve outs. Based on a systematic literature review, we conducted 18 exploratory expert interviews with different stakeholders involved in the management of IT carve outs. We show that the perception and acknowledgement of the IT function within the overall carve out project is broadly underestimated. We elaborate on learnings for the successful management of the IT function within a carve out project: the involvement of IT executives in the early phases of contract negotiations; improved IT due diligence processes for a better anticipation of IT costs; early analysis of the target enterprise architecture. Additionally, we identified success factors of managing IT carve out projects. This paper is among the first to shed light into the research field of IT carve out projects including exploratory empirical data and gives recommendations for future research of IT carve outs.     «

Carve out projects have recently become an emerging issue in practice and theory given the diversity of strategic foci of companies as well as recent merger and acquisition activities. This paper highlights the relevance of IT in such carve out projects. IT depicts their characteristics and specific features with regard to general IT projects as well as success factors for the management of IT carve outs. Based on a systematic literature review, we conducted 18 exploratory expert interviews with...     »