Characteristics of identity and access management projects

The management of identities and access rights is becoming more and more complex for organisations and thus identity and access management solutions are being developed and taken into use in organisations. The implementation of these solutions is however complex, time-consuming and difficult to manage and the projects often fall short of expectations or fail in the implementation. In this thesis the characteristics and special problem areas of the projects are being reviewed. This thesis also gathers guidelines for a successful implementation project. The beginning of the thesis will explain what identity and access management is and the most important concepts. Also the most common problems without it are described along with the reasons for implementing these systems. The research was conducted as a qualitative research by reviewing publications written by professionals, companies and research organisations. It was found that the implementation of an identity and access management solution widely affects an organisation. For this reason the projects require the expertise, participation and commitment from many people and parts of the organisation. It was found that the reasons for an unsuccessful project are not related to technical issues. The reasons are more related to requirements, planning, people and communication and training about the solution. It was also found that having a clear strategy, plans and requirements, involving the right people and marketing the solution efficiently will minimise the risks of project failure.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format