Flawless Software Never Got Implemented

¶ … Flawless Software Never Got Implemented A Dream Project Turns Nightmare: Summary of the Case: The case of Integra and the software that they tried to develop deals with the study (or lack thereof) of how the market would really respond to what was being created. Since the preliminary studies were only conducted on the lower-level credit unions, the regional issues were not taken into consideration and a very promising project turned out to be something that no one would use or implement.

Many of the start-up costs were also not taken into consideration, and this resulted in the creation of a wonderful product that had absolutely no market. The two main problems in this case are: (1) the fact that the company proceeded to create the product with minimal research.

Since the project was seen to be so valuable, it was assumed that it could not fail and therefore the risk analysis issues that should have been dealt with were ignored (Roy & Aubert, 2002), and (2) the fact that the regional offices for the credit unions throughout the rest of Canada were not consulted (Roy & Aubert, 2002). By meeting only with lower-level individuals, the company did not consider all of the users and others that would have a say in whether their software products would be purchased. 2.

The factors that affect the problems appear to stem largely from the idea that the company put the project on the 'fast track' and therefore did not take the time to really analyze what it was that they were doing and the best way to ensure that there would be a market for the product when it was created. This has happened before with other IS failures (Abdul-Gader, 1990).

Despite the fact that this problem has occurred before, however, Integra appeared to believe that it would not happen to them and that their product was so much better than the competition that the credit unions could not help but realize this and switch over to the new product that was created. 3. Managerial issues in this case included the fact that upper management was in such a hurry to develop the project that they did not stop to look at how much risk they were undertaking.

Their resources, however, consisted of good and competent people that had a lot of experience with IS and it issues and should have been able to recognize the problems that took place later in the project. Organizational issues were mainly related to the idea that the company was so large and powerful that it could not fail with a project and that the competition would never be able to keep up. Organizational resources fell along these same lines, as money and people for the project were both very plentiful.

Technological issues came quickly to the project, as there were so many different systems that the software had to work with, and this was something that had not been anticipated. However, the company had so many technological resources at their disposal that the management felt there would not be any large problems with the technology that could not be overcome. 4. Different individuals bring different things to it applications, and they play many different roles within an organization when it is working to develop software (Badri, 1992).

For this particular case, the overall planning was done by a small group, and the implementation of the project when trying to sell it to others or provide it to others for test systems fell only to one individual, who returned from a marketing tour empty-handed (Roy & Aubert, 2002). The management of the project involved the same people that were largely involved in the planning, which made sense because they were familiar with the project.

However, it also stopped the stream of fresh ideas that might have allowed someone else to understand that there was a problem coming up and therefore point it out to the company and their business partner before things turned sour. 5. There are few alternatives for dealing with the problems that the case has. Management should have done further research before work began, but it is far too late to work on that now.

There should also be some way to change or adjust the software so that there can be a market for it. Whether this can be done is unknown, but it seems unlikely given the idea that the credit unions would actually lose money at first to use the software that Integra designed.

The best alternative appears to be to simply forget the whole thing, but it cost the company a great deal of money that it would like to recover, and it also made management very concerned about taking any kind of risk in the future. 6. As for recommendations, it seems that shelving the project completely and taking a business loss would be the most realistic option, if not the most pleasant one. If there is no market for.