Issues


Issue: There Is A Lack Of Sensitivity To The Culture Factors In Specific Countries

This issue was mentioned, but not addressed. A common thread through the book has been the cultural factors among countries and even parts of a country. Here the issue is applied to software implementation.

Impact

Culture anywhere in the world dictates how you do business and make money. It affects how you interact with customers and suppliers. While there has been some common adoption of some “Western” ways, there remain local nuances and mores. Culture affects the business rules. If the business rules of the software package don’t match up or cannot be reconciled, then there are bound to be problems. Something has to give—either the package fails or the business is affected.

Prevention

The best prevention is to understand the culture and business rules in each location at the start. This is a very tall order so let’s simplify it. You should identify about 10–20 critical transactions that would be covered by a new system. Then you should examine how these are carried out in each country in detail using the methods from Chapter 2.

Action

You will begin to detect problems when business rules and exceptions start appearing. People will ask “How will the system handle such-and-such a transaction?” When they get an answer, look at their reaction. If they are quiet and don’t anything else, you know that there is a problem. They won’t discuss it where they are dominated by others. When the problem arises, then you should lower the effort in the software implementation and go back to the transactions and perform analysis.

Issue: The Software Was Purchased; However, It Cannot Handle The Regulatory Requirements In Certain Countries Despite The Vendor Claims

If you are a software provider and you find that you can sell your product in a particular country to several firms, it will be tempting to the marketing staff to indicate that it will work well in the country. However, this may only be for a few industries—not general. Marketing makes the claims that the customer believes and then there are problems.

Impact

Typically, since the software cannot be rebuilt, there are two recourses. One is that you create a workaround using software tables and procedures. Another approach is to create a “shadow system.” This can serve as either a front or back end to the system.

Prevention

You really have to evaluate the software more fully during the evaluation work. The true test is to send specific transactions through the system. If the vendor is unwilling or unable to do this, then you will have to resort to having them explain how the transaction would work.

Action

If you did not take preventive action, you are likely to find out about this problem when you are winding up the project in testing. Then suddenly, the crisis hits. Before starting to fix a problem at a time, the best approach is to do an overall assessment to determine how much of the work and transactions are affected.

Issue: A Large Number Of Key Personnel May Be Tied Up In This Project For Months

Guidelines for personnel and team members were given in Chapter 4. Recall that you want to have junior people who have energy on the project. Here, the point is that you require senior people with detailed knowledge of the business rules. This is true, but you don’t need them all of the time.

Impact

If the critical “king bees” and “queen bees” are taken out of a department, the remaining employees may feel lost. They may not know how to handle certain pieces of work. The employees go to the supervisor or manager who now feels put out that they are coming to her/him. After all, they may not be familiar with that work either. As you can see, the impact can be dramatic and long-lasting. When the senior person returns from the project, he/she is inundated with work. Then back to the project again. They become burned out.

Prevention

The best method for preventing this situation is to involve junior people heavily from the department. Then only pull the senior people in when you require specific business rules. You can measure yourself by seeing the mixture of people and total hours in the project.

Action

If you find that you are becoming overdependent upon senior employees and they are on the project all of the time, then you have to look not at this, but at the reasons why you need the senior employees. What is so arcane and technical? Remember that the package will not be modified. If the senior people are on the project too much, then it is a sign that there may be too much attention to exceptions, workarounds, and shadow systems. Don’t assume that this is real productive work. If you get sucked into these exceptions, you may never get out!

Issue: The Software Does Not Interface Easily With Several Critical Legacy Systems

Software interfaces are a curse of the industry and have been for over 40 years despite all efforts at standardization through EDI (electronic data interchange) and XML (extensible markup language). You could write a whole library of books on this issue. In brief here are some of the problems. Software gets written at different times using slightly different techniques and technology. This makes interfaces more technically difficult. Now programmers come and go so that over 15–20 years (the average life of much of the software out there in operation), the software programs resemble a puzzle—lack of documentation and difficult to understand. Also, hard to make changes. These are just a few of the reasons why interfacing to older, legacy systems is difficult. Why don’t people just replace these systems? They work so if it is not broken, why fix it? Next, some of the packages are as old as the customized programs.

Impact

The interface is normally extremely critical. Often, the legacy system feeds the new software package so that it must have the information. Because of the time required to do the interface, it is often on the critical path of the project. Many times it will be delayed—really impacting the project.

Prevention

There is no way to prevent the interface. It must be started early and must be given a high priority by the senior programmers. Anything that can be done to simplify the interface should be evaluated during the design.

Action

If the interface part of the project is suffering, then you have to consider setting up a more limited interface for selected transactions. Putting more people on the interface work will often actually slow the work down.

Issue: Headquarters Does Not Provide Sufficient Resources Or Money For The Implementation In Remote Locations

This is a classic issue that we have encountered time and time again. Headquarters expects people in the field to just drop what they are doing and support this as another project—not a good idea. The project leaders at headquarters may not have ever managed a similar project before and are clueless about what is required. If they added on the cost of the staff and managers in the field that will have to support the project, the costs might far outweigh the benefits.

Impact

Local managers will quickly ask what additional resources will be provided to them to do the project. They are often met with vague promises and assurances that there will not be much work. As the local people get sucked into the vortex of the software implementation, then there will be more complaints. Their local work may and likely will suffer. Things will slip. The current processes in the company location will deteriorate—just as they are trying to implement better processes.

Prevention

Planning for the project must be realistic. Also, follow the guidelines of Chapter 5 and use a collaborative approach with the people in the field.

Action

When you start to notice the stress and problems, then you have to step back and determine a more reasonable schedule—if there are no more resources. Instead of slowing everything down, try to implement a module or part of the system.

Issue: The Consultant Selected For Supporting The Implementation Of The Software Does Not Have Personnel in Some Company Locations

Many consulting firms make promises about their international presence. However, what this means sometimes is that when they get business in some country where they really don’t operate, they subcontract out to some local firm. These individuals may not be connected at all with the consulting firm. All of the problems mentioned in Chapter 8 come to the foreground.

Impact

The consulting firm either fills in with local people or flies in expensive outside consultants. In both cases, you lose. The costs will be higher. There will be a steep learning curve that wasn’t planned. The work may not be of consistent quality.

Prevention

The best method of preventing this problem is to follow the guidelines of Chapter 8 and find out what capabilities they have in each country. In addition, ascertain how they manage multiple locations and people being spread among multiple clients.

Action

You have to track the initial work that a consultant does in a country very carefully. You seek to build up a pattern of behavior between the local office and the consultants working there. Then you have to monitor the consulting firm to see whom they are sending into your offices.




International Project Management
International Project Management: Leadership in Complex Environments
ISBN: 0470578823
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 154

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