Recent studies conceming GIS show thet it is the fastest growing segment (both hard & software) of the graphical computer market. 70% of private organizations expect to usc GIS. asa strategic tool within their company. Like a product, GIS in an organization has a life cycle. According to the model of Nolan this life eycle starts with awareness and ends when full integration with other information systems is achieved. Until recently project management for GIS projects was mainly about projects which were considered to be experimental. The requirements for such projects differ from the requirements for projects which are strategic for a company. Strategic GIS projects require a project manager with thorough understanding of issues such as: planning, knowledge of the objectives of the project, project environment and polities. There is little experience with such GIS projects. However the question * How to manage a ely” has to be answered for strategically positioned GIS projects to be Tris important for project managers to understand the relationship between the position of GIS in an organisation (Nolan Model) in relationship to the importance of GIS for the organisation (Me Farlan). The way a GIS project should be handled depends, to a large extend, on these two positionings. A combination of IT methodologies such as Structured Analysis and Desiga, project management methodologies such as PRINCE end Hewlett-Packards Customer Project Life Cycle 2 combined with best practices are proposed in order to provide a framework. for project managers, to handle GIS projects which are considered strategic for the organisation, This framework, based on prior experience and through evaluation of a complex GIS project has been shown, in some respects, to work. There is still some uncertainty since there is litle experience in the market with strategic GIS projects so there are not a lot of “best practices” to leam from and to further evaluate the proposed approach available.INTRODUCTION In the last decade computer systems which can handle large amounts of “Geographic Information” have become sufficiently powerful and inexpensive to be used on a wide scale, Currently even personel computers are well suited to be used in GIS environments. The ficld of Geographical or Spatial data is very wide and GIS systems can be used for many different pusposes. Some of the more important fields of application are: { Land & Property Systems: { Environmental Management: { Socioeconomic Analyzis: { Telecommunications: { Health, ital format. Investments in the field of ‘More and more data are becoming available in a data communication are huge and enable the transfer of large amounts of data all over the world Intemet’s and Intra net's are increasing the availebility of information for large parts of society. And these developments change the way organizations think and act. ‘Well designed GIS systems will enable quick and easy access to these large volumes of data and enable organization to use them to gather information either for their own benefit or for the public benefit in order to:‘Many organizations nowadays recognize that gcographic information can serve as an important resource. A successfully implemented GIS can also enable the “non” GIS population to be more effective without increasing the complexity of their work. GIS however is a complex information technology which requires a lot of planning in order to have a successful implementation. There is a lack of experience in large GIS project design and implementation and many questions have to be considered when performing a GIS project some of these are: {What are the mission, vision and objectives of the project? { What has to be achieved by means of this project: { How do I build such a GIS system? { What are the experiences (best practices) in this field? This thesis is about the project management aspects of GIS and the way to handle this ‘complexity from a project managers point of view. This is accomplished by providing some theoretical background, a practical approach towards a GIS project and a case study of a ‘complex GIS environment.