Introduction
In the recent past I was involved in development of new payroll software for our organization. The project implementation kicked off very well but failed in the way. The reason why this project failed is because we failed to document the processes and that we need the system to automate. I believe we failed in this project because we overlooked this initial essential step. Before starting implementing the project we never documented all the processes and procedures that will be employed all through.
Discussion
The reason behind the failure of the project was that we never clearly documented the old project processes and procedures and how they were to be changed to the new ones were employing in the project we were implementing.
The project lacked a well defined beginning point which in essence brought more challenges in defining and verifying the organizational goals associated with the project.
We also failed to give allowance for defining the implementation process. This is very critical in determining the success of the project and thus efforts should be made to attain this. The primary flaw in our project implementation that led to its failure was in the process definition. For process definition to be successful there ought to be a clear gap between the organization stakeholders and the Information technology stakeholders (Myers & Guzman, 2007). In other words, the most excellent way to attain a successful project implementation is to record all the processes and procedures before the Information Technology personnel start to work on the project. It is essential that the processes and procedures be documented in a way that can be easily known by the product users and business managers.
The key step in project implementation is getting to know how the difference between how the project was carried out before and how it will executed on the new system. This requires proper understanding of the project by those in information technology as well the system users. This step should not left to those in information technology alone.
For optimal understanding and sharing of thoughts in this shift there ought to be a greater level similarity of understanding between how the organization sees and identifies implementation processes as well as how those in information technology sees and identifies the implementation processes and procedures.
This helps the business organization make maximum use and concur with the project implementation processes and procedures without participating in the process the information technology people are employing. This also allows the IT a chance to define and stipulate the organizational requirements in their own terms which in essence eliminates confusion between the IT and the organization management (Goman, 2000).
A clearly specified and documented project implementation processes is a essential foundation for process improvement whether this done before IT starts working on the project or at the project implementation period. This is because it set free the organization from abstract controls and allows a room for process development.
Our failure to clearly define the business processes and procedures before starting to implement the project led to some problems. One of the problems was incomplete software requirements. The absence of specified processes led our team to create software that was not reflecting the organizational needs. The root cause of this was that we overlooked the process of specifying and defining proper software requirement the organization’s system.
The consequence of not properly documenting project processes and procedures brought about residual manual processes. The project implementation took off before proper definition of all processes which led to into a state of confusion whereby the software developed was not well taken up by organization. This in essence resulted to numerous organization sub-processes and procedures which could not be done on the organizational system in its preliminary state. This sub-processes and procedures remained manual processes (Penrod, 2007).
Failure to document the project processes also led to incomplete software testing. This is because the organization system lacked a well basis for testing. In other words, it lacked methods of ascertaining the benefits that were to be accrued after implementing the project. All software testing methods needs a well defined ways of understanding the benefits of the software before they are put in use. The process of testing the software should not be left to the end users, since they lack understanding of the software.
Conclusion
Without question, failure to properly define project process can essentially increase the project implementation period and also lower the quality of the outcome. These are the root causes of many project failures. It can therefore be argued that project process that cannot be documented can not bring forth any meaningful end result. It is also not possible to measure the competency of those implementing the project without a well defined project processes. In a nut shell, the only way to avoid failure when implementing a project is to have a well defined and well documented project processes before starting implementing a project.
References
Goman, C. K., (2000). The Biggest Mistakes in Managing Change. Web.
Myers, K. & Guzman, I. (2007). “Is Your Next IT Project Scheduled for Failure?” Web.
Penrod, (2007). Coping With Poorly Planned Change. Web.