Introduction

Information Technology (IT) has an important role in the strategic function of the leading companies in the competitive markets (Porter, 2001). On the other hand, there is still an important discussion about the difficulties of finding evidence of returns over the investments in IT, called the "productivity paradox," (Willcocks & Lester, 1997; Brynjolfsson, 1993; Strassman, 1990).

The evaluation of project efficiency is a rather controversial issue. The uncertainty and the complexity inherent to IT projects pose a hindrance to the evaluation of their efficiency, both regarding cost and time frames, and in terms of quality. Meeting project efficiency goals involves balancing scope expectations and the available resources (Rabechini Jr. & Carvalho, 1999). Thus, IT project management addresses the full range of concepts, tools and techniques to improve project performance and organizational effectiveness and efficiency (Carvalho et al., 2002; Laurindo et al., 2002).

This chapter presents the results of studying the adoption of efficiency models in Information Technology area in the selected Brazilian companies. A comparative analysis among project management models adopted is done. The study is based on multiple cases, financial, telecommunications and building materials companies.