For IT project managers, how to implement IT projects successfully is always an important issue due to high failure rate of traditional IT project implementation. When more and more enterprises start to develop systems under the new IT methodology in service oriented IT projects, it is essential to access risks coming with this new IT concept. In this research we aim to identify risk factors related to service oriented IT projects and then analyze the impact and rank of these risk factors. Adapted from the general IT project risk category proposed by Ewusi (1994), we propose 6 risk factors of service-oriented IT projects. The risk framework highlights the properties of business strategy, business Process, and workforce under on-demand business architecture. We use a customer service system to justify our research framework, applying the IBM’s concept of SIMM (service integrated maturity model). A pretest is first conducted with several IT experts who has implemented service oriented IT project experience, followed by a general survey. A binary logistic regression is used to testify the hypotheses. The result shows that essential risk factors that influence the adoption of service oriented system, from the highest to lowest, are insufficient technology planning, lack of expertise, ineffective project governance, and organizational misalignment. The findings help CIOs and project managers realize of the risks and the priority of these risks that have to be noticed and controlled when making decisions on service oriented systems adoption.

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