Projects are usually initiated with the main goal being overcoming a certain challenge and offer a bigger room for more growth. More than many times projects fail due to several unseen or ignored hitches, however they provide an opportunity to learn and avoid repetition of the same mistakes in future.
In this article I will offer a classic example of a well known failed project by the world IT giant IBM.
In early 1956 this It giant set out to build the world ever fastest computer which they branded Stretch. In1961 the IBM engineers managed to deliver this computer which they claimed would have the ability to process over half a million commands in less than a second. Its life span as the faster computer was short-lived and its growing glory was doomed. Its in 1964 this IBM 7030 stretch was considered a big failure as it could not exceed the speed of the then system that was been used by LOS Alamos library. It capacity was rated below 40% and thus it could not serve the initial purpose.
Having faced this unseen failure the company, IBM decided to cut the price of stretch, IBM 7030 to $8 from $14 million. This price was far much below the coat, meaning that the whole undertaking was a loss making project.
According to Kendrick (2009), “Understanding factors that make accurate estimating hard to do for technical projects provide an insight into sources of project risk and helps us to improve future estimates” (p. 79). The group of engineers did not give –up. This experience became they underlying consideration in the future development of super speed processing ability computers.
The major weakness with the initial designs of the Stretch, IBM 7030, was that the machine lacked proper pipelining, memory protection and memory intervening which are very crucial in
Sustain high speed for computers. According to Emerson (1995), “Even though the machine was least down for errors within its fulltime operation for 24 hours in a day and five days in a week its speed was great compromise to what was expected” (p. 172). It was not total failure for them but an opportunity to learn on how to improve on later designs as Turing who was one of the leading engineers on this initial design described.
Another aspect that is linked to this big failure is the inability of the team to set out a proper guideline in accessing this computer to more complex processes that closely matched to those of their client. They did not carry out pilot test to evaluate how well this machine was best suited to the clients systems and needs.
Another big failure is on the pricing on the stretch INM 7030, the team was not cautions on the pricing ad rather focused more on the speed of the computer. This made them reaped huge losses from the only nine computers they had managed to produce. According to Remenyi (1999), “Failure is a major problem in information systems projects as it is especially costly not only because of the resources invested, or rather spent on the failed project, but such failure frequently causes disruption to the organization’s mode of doing business” ( p. 4). They made a cumulative revenue loss of $54 million shillings in 1965.Their Computer became obsolete within a period of less than four years time, meaning that their technology was not well suited to stand the test of time.
In a nutshell, the project was a big failure to this IT giant which made them incur huge losses and also learn a lot in their future developments.
References:
- Emerson,W.P (1995). Building IBM: Shaping an Industry and Its Technology. Cambridge: MIT press.
- Remenyi, D. (1999). Stop IT Project Failure Through Risk Management. London: Routledge
- Kendrick, T. (2009). Identifying and Managing Project Risk: Essential Tools for Failure-Proofing. New York, NW: Amacom.
