Software Development Failures: Anatomy of Abandoned Projects
by Kweku Ewusi-Mensah ISBN:0262050722
The MIT Press © 2003 (276 pages)
This text offers an empirically grounded study that suggests why failed or abandoned software development projects happen and how they can be avoided


Выдержка:
"Hershey Foods' ERP Project Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems is a comprehensive applications systems package that organizations use to automate their back-office operations. For example, it permits order processing and distribution functions to be fully integrated for smooth operation of the business. It is with these ambitious goals in mind that Hershey Foods embarked on its ERP project in 1996: to integrate the disparate legacy applications systems for handling order processing, inventory, and human resource operations at Hershey into one computing platform. Hershey engaged the services of four different consulting firms to work with its IT department to install SAP AG R/3 software in conjunction with software from two other vendors—Manugistics Group for its planning applications software, and Siebel Systems for its pricing-promotion-package software. The project was estimated to cost between $112 and $115 million (Osterland 2000; Stedman 1999).

In July 1999, with implementation already three months behind schedule, Hershey went live with the conversion from the old legacy system to the new SAP AG R/3 system. Two months after the implementation was supposed to be completed, Hershey was still finding fixes to the system. The company's sales dropped in its third quarter—its busiest sales season of the year—by more than 12 percent. With it, there was a corresponding drop of more than 18 percent in revenues compared to the previous year; Hershey experienced a 29 percent increase in project inventory; and its mean delivery time for orders increased from five to twelve days, as reported in several publications. (See, for example, Osterland 2000; Collett 1999; Stedman 1999; 2000; Songini 2000; "ERP Stumbles," 2000; Wheatley 2000; Nicholson 1999.)

The implementation period was originally estimated at four years but was later shortened to thirty months—for unspecified reasons—despite the fact that the R/3 software modules were to be integrated with software from two other vendors. The consequence of the compressed implementation time frame was that insufficient time was devoted to test runs of the modules and training of the users. The implementation problems often associated with ERP systems reported in the media are more often than not attributed to these overly ambitious time frames and inadequate user training, which combine to create havoc in the organization when the system is fully activated. Because of the complexity of the R/3 software, any implementation that involves customization with other vendors' software frequently has unintended and/or unanticipated consequences that are difficult and time consuming to find and correct. It took about a year for Hershey to fix all the related implementation bugs and to get the company back to normal operating conditions and profitability (Songini 2000).

In the Hershey ERP R/3 project problems, we see echoes of FoxMeyer's Delta project, analyzed in detail in chapters 4 through 6. For example, the drastic reduction of the implementation time from four years to thirty months is generally identified as a major contributor to the problems the project experienced when it went live. FoxMeyer experienced similar problems, which contributed to its bankruptcy. However, Hershey was able to avoid a similar fate because of its size and the superior resources it could summon to deal with the emergencies resulting from the implementation failure.
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