The Runaway Project
Root Cause of Major Infrastructure Replacement Project
The company’s business depended on heavily upon the backend services. The IT-capabilities were required by IVK to get ahead of its competitors. Based on a review of IT capabilities with the competitors of IVK, the IT-team identified areas where they trailed on their competitors. The recommendations were given to replace the middle and back-end services with immediate effect.
Project Difficulties
The Infrastructure Replacement project started by hiring a third party firm to do the work. They recommended changing the support software systems with packaged software that were mostly on Java and Oracle technologies. The replacement project was to retain the legacy software systems of IVK and also implement newer software packages. The major difficulty came in the form of mismatch of technologies and internal expertise. The legacy systems were all based on Windows, Microsoft SQL Server, and Visual Studio .NET while the software packages introduced by NetiFects were all based on Linux, Java, and Oracle. Also to replace the legacy systems was very difficult and a huge task to undertake. That mixed with a change of technologies and lack of new skills in internal staff made the project even more difficult.
Barton’s Decision to Terminate NetiFects
Based on all the details and the facts of NetiFects, I do agree with Barton’s decision to terminate NetiFects. NetiFects was trying to operate within the limits of their expertise rather than acknowledging the complexities involved because of the legacy system and the earlier technologies. NetiFects were also not working completely in synchronization with the internal IT team. Because of these reasons the cost had gone up to $3 million and there were no concrete results to show.
IR Project
Given the pace of development of technology, organizations need to keep up with the newer technologies to be ahead in the competition and take benefits arising out of newer technologies. It is because of these reasons that projects like Infrastructure Replacement can never be avoided for any given organization.
