You are the CIO of a company whose board, a year
ago, agreed with your recommendation to upgrade existing computer
systems by buying an "ERP-like package", "lightly-customised", from
a "solution provider".
Using a hurried selection
process, you had identified and chosen the package and the
provider. You meant to visit reference sites, but were too busy;
and intended to involve your company's end-user staff in selection.
But didn't. Your operations managers never completed that full
written requirements specification. Your lawyers only had time for
a "quick look" at the contract.
In the event, the package installation is severely delayed - the
"light customisation" work needed is badly underestimated by the
supplier's project manager. When finally delivered, the incomplete
system is implemented on a "pilot" basis only. Problems with data
migration from one of your company's key legacy systems bedevil
system testing during pilot running.
Each party accuses the other of failing to take responsibility
for cleaning the legacy data. Your working relationship with the
supplier's project manager has badly deteriorated. End-users refuse
to love the new system, claiming it is more difficult, slow and
cumbersome to use.
Performance 'non-functional'
Now you have checked the contract and find it is silent on data
migration, data quality, and who is responsible for achieving it.
Same story, as regards "non-functional requirements", such as
performance and end-user response times. Ditto user training...
Your board is "losing patience", as you euphemistically put it
to the litigation lawyers you've just consulted. They advise
writing a letter on your behalf giving the supplier 30 days' notice
to deliver a "functionally-complete, operationally-reliable and
contractually-compliant system". If the supplier then fails to do
so, you could terminate the contract.
You may then be able to sue the supplier for breach of contract,
claiming the system is "worthless and useless". Your board insists
it would want well over £5m in compensation.
The supplier tells you it will vigorously defend any such claim,
and will counter-claim for £750,000 of unpaid invoices. It contends
it is your own failure to analyse and define your business
processes and system requirements, to provide clean legacy data and
to collaborate in achieving a successful project that are to blame.
And there is nothing wrong with the software package. "How can
there be, when it is installed, 'tried and tested', at 20 other
sites?" it asks.
Heed the eight warning flares!
It adds that there were so many changes in requirements insisted
upon by your company that its programmers had to "write and test
masses of new code". Furthermore, it alleges your end-users refused
to learn the new software. Its lawyers have told it the courts have
ruled there is an obligation on a customer to co-operate with a
supplier in achieving the success of an IT project - which your
company has woefully failed to do.
Either way, your company still does not have the nice new system
its board wanted. You have taken to reading the job ads...
Call yourself an IT professional? If only you had paid early
heed to the forensically-established "eight red warning flares of
the IT disaster project", and checked if any of these things were
absent:
- Statement of requirements
- Prioritisation of most important requirements (those that will
have the most serious business consequences if not delivered)
- Data transfer/migration specification (what? who? new software
needed? how to test integrity, completeness and accuracy of
data?)
- Capacity and performance requirements (end-user response times,
throughput)
- System cycle (what are the business's true critical needs and
operational deadlines?)
- End-user training (plans, timetable, materials, data)
- Acceptance criteria (clear plans, processes, materials)
- Project-management roles, responsibilities and
processes
Each of these key things should be in writing: clear,
comprehensive, detailed, unambiguous - and in the contract from the
start. Otherwise, make ready for that IT disaster - and the
litigation that could all so readily follow it...
Stephen Castell is chairman of Castell Consulting