Introduction
The implementation of a project is a task that is intended to ease the operations of a particular company or firm. The implementers who need to achieve a particular objective or aim carefully plan these collaborative enterprises which in most cases involve design or research. Therefore, the project managers need to perform their duties in the correct way and with competency so that at the end the aim of the project is achieved. Generally, causes of project failure include: Difficulties in prediction or usage of technologies, time schedules that are aggressive, unrealistic expectations, lack of resources among others.
Turning to our case study, there are a number of reasons that made the project to fail. Firstly, the IT development process was inappropriate and as a result SCT ASRS project failed. No single person in the management team had experience of the attempted type of IT development. As a result of this the process was inappropriate. Therefore, the intended purpose was not achieved and this led to the failure of the project. This cause has its repercussions that among them are frustrating the workers due to low job satisfaction, degradation of quality, time and cost overruns among others.
Also, there is evidence of various types of incompetency in the management of the project. The general manager who was an expert in the management of civil engineering projects did not have experience in the management of the IT project. On the other hand, the two project managers were incompetent as we read that one of them did not have formal qualifications in management. The success of any project is determined by the commitment and competency of those who are responsible for its management. This management team did not have knowledge in IT management as they were specialized in other areas.
The projects in our case study required a high degree of research and development. These projects lacked the functional specifications, design charts, module specifications and data models. Also there was deficiency in the test plans which were in the development process technical control. Therefore, all these were responsible for the failure of the project. This can be attributed to the incompetence of the management team. The stated reason also contributed to the inappropriate IT development process.
In addition to the above mentioned reasons, the projects failure was further contributed by the development process nature that hindered most integration testing that was done in the latter stages of this project. The management bothered less as they made little attempt in the modification of the development plan. They also took little formal action that was needed to correct the deficiencies which were related to the software. The developers were left to add additional features and modify their code when necessary which made them to work for long hours. This therefore led to the failure of the project.
In a nut shell, the failure of the project was greatly contributed by the management team. So it is important for the implementers of any project to choose a management team that is competent as they are just like drivers who create a plan and follow it.
