Four types of failure

Lyytinen and Hirschheim (1987) identified four types of failure revealing
some of the richness of debate in this area:

  • correspondence failure means a lack of correspondence between objectives and outcomes of the IS
  • process failure this type of failure usually refers to one of two types of failure, failure to produce a working system or producing one that is significantly overbudget or delayed.
  • interaction failure a gap between the requirements and the system.
  • expectation failure this is the inability of an IS to meet a specific stakeholder group’s expectations while others may enjoy benefits from the system.

Lyytinen, K., Hirschheim, R. (1987), “Information systems failures – a survey and classification of empirical literature”, Oxford Surveys in Information Technology, Vol. 4 pp.257-309