{"id":119,"date":"2017-03-05T21:09:31","date_gmt":"2017-03-05T21:09:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bocchinfuso.net\/?p=119"},"modified":"2017-04-06T21:34:03","modified_gmt":"2017-04-06T21:34:03","slug":"fit-mgt5013-wk8-discussion-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bocchinfuso.net\/index.php\/2017\/03\/05\/fit-mgt5013-wk8-discussion-post\/","title":{"rendered":"FIT MGT5014 – Wk8 Discussion Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why Systems Fail?<\/b><\/p>\n

It has been said that most systems fail because system builders ignore organizational behavior problems. Discuss the implications of this statement.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Organizational behavior and culture can determine the success or failure of just about anything, information systems are not immune from this key risk variable. \u00a0The reason books like \u201cHow to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie\u201d, \u201cTo Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others by Daniel H. Pink\u201d, \u201cThe Paradox of Choice by Barry <\/span>Schwatrz<\/span>\u201d, \u201cEnchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions by Guy Kawasaki\u201d and many, many others exist is because as human beings we know success or failure is greatly influenced by our ability to influence others, to change behavior and culture.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Information systems are often built and designed by technologists who for years ignored the end-user, crafting systems they felt would optimize the business from their perspective but never considering that these systems we complex and while logical to them were illogical to the end-user. Over the past twenty of so years, we\u2019ve witnessed the emergence of B2C (business to consumer) organizations which have eclipsed B2B (business to business) organizations in many aspects. \u00a0These B2C organizations like Apple, Facebook, Google, Snapchat to name a few, focus on the end-user, they use agile development paradigms vs. rigid waterfall paradigms to rapidly pivot to meet the demands of a fickle consumer base. \u00a0The difference today is there is no concept of shelfware, the idea that Oracle or SAP sells you an application which you may or may not implement, adoption is paramount in the B2C world, customers have far more choice, they test drive and pilot applications, and initial commitment is far lower. \u00a0The most successful information system initiative today have bottom-up support vs. top-down mandates. \u00a0I think about the shift to cloud computing from traditional on-premise infrastructure, and this movement was driven by developers looking to simplify the process and become agiler by removing the painful processes built by the IT guy. \u00a0Five years ago IT organizations called this Shadow IT and resisted, but these grassroots information systems (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, FaaS, etc\u2026) have been some of the most transformative in the last thirty years. \u00a0IT organizations are having to learn how to apply governance to information systems which are widely deployed, the realization here is that the end-user wants to drive the experience, they don\u2019t want the experience dictated to them. \u00a0The power of the developers and end-users (The New Kingmakers by \u00a0Stephen O’Grady) has fostered a positive culture shift inside many IT organizations who sadly have been so predictable for so many years that SNL parodied them in the Nick Burns sketches (https:\/\/www.nbc.com\/saturday-night-live\/cast\/jimmy-fallon-14931\/character\/nick-burns-17301).<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

References<\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jimmy Fallon. (n.d.). Retrieved March 05, 2017, from https:\/\/www.nbc.com\/saturday-night-live\/cast\/jimmy-fallon-14931\/character\/nick-burns-17301<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Laudon, K. C., & Laudon, J. P. (2016). Management information systems: managing the digital firm. Boston: Pearson.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tang, E. (2011, January 22). Why Do Information Systems Fail? And how can managers\/ IT managers reduce the likelihood of such failures? Retrieved March 05, 2017, from https:\/\/erictang711.wordpress.com\/2011\/01\/23\/why-do-information-systems-fail-and-how-can-managers-it-managers-reduce-the-likelihood-of-such-failures\/<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Identify Solutions<\/b><\/h5>\n

Identify solutions that allowed Canada Life Insurance Corporation to correct the main gaps in the CIM system and the errors caused by the excessive decentralization of IT development services.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

    \n
  • Canada Life Insurance over rotated on decentralization and recognized that not all steering activities could be decentralized, so some activities were centralized and made the responsibility of the Department of Actuarial Services for branches.<\/span><\/li>\n
  • All change management was centralized under Ghislaine Boulliance, with the exception of code tables which would be controlled by the users.<\/span><\/li>\n
  • A process was developed tracking changes requests as well as following-up on completed change requests. \u00a0This process ensures that change requests in the pipeline are appropriately prioritized and that one a change request is marked completed that there is a connection with the end-user to ensure the change is as expected, to take feedback and iterate if required.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Because Canada Life Insurance decided to outsource development and deployment of CIM to ITConsult they should have had developed a governance around exit management which would have outlined how ITConsult would transition post-development. \u00a0It\u2019s implied that ITConsult\u2019s departure left both a skills and culture gap that could have been avoided.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    References<\/b><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Laudon, K. C., & Laudon, J. P. (2016). Management information systems: managing the digital firm. Boston: Pearson.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Roy, V., & Aubert, B. (2006). The CIM Project. HEC Montreal Centre for case studies 14 pages,4(1). Retrieved March 5, 2017.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    CIM Project Opinion<\/b><\/h5>\n

    In your opinion, do you think the project was a success or a failure? Give your reason(s).<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    IMO the project was not a success. \u00a0Canada Life Insurance attempted to do too much with this project. \u00a0They were taking on the development and deployment of a transformative information system and at the same time attempting to shift their management approach for technology project. \u00a0This new management approach for IT projects seemed to be aimed at decentralizing decision making, increasing end-user involvement in how technology solutions were architected and deployed and moving from a traditional waterfall based project methodology to an agile or hybrid based project methodology. \u00a0Canada Life Insurance was just trying to do too much, they further compounded the issues by engaging ITConsult (outsourcer) for the development and deployment of CIM. \u00a0ITConsult ended up controlling the direction of the CIM project which negated most of what Canada Life Insurance was trying to accomplish and also introduced new issues around organizational behavior and knowledge management.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    It seems that the application was prototyped but never tested for scale, a common issue with rapid prototyping (Laudon & Laudon 2015 p 523). \u00a0Once the CIM system went into production they experienced massive scale issues and over fifty change requests.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Canada Life Insurance worked to rectify the issues post-production deployment but the project at production roll-out was a failure. \u00a0CanLife should have taken a more phased approach to development and deployment addressing application requirements and organization behavior modifications using and approach that provided a higher probability of success.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    References<\/b><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Laudon, K. C., & Laudon, J. P. (2016). Management information systems: managing the digital firm. Boston: Pearson.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Roy, V., & Aubert, B. (2006). The CIM Project. HEC Montreal Centre for case studies 14 pages,4(1). Retrieved March 5, 2017.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Why Systems Fail? It has been said that most systems fail because system builders ignore organizational behavior problems. Discuss the implications of this statement.   Organizational behavior and culture can determine the success or failure of just about anything, information systems are not immune from this key risk variable. \u00a0The reason books like \u201cHow to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bocchinfuso.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bocchinfuso.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bocchinfuso.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bocchinfuso.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bocchinfuso.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/bocchinfuso.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134,"href":"https:\/\/bocchinfuso.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions\/134"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bocchinfuso.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bocchinfuso.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bocchinfuso.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bocchinfuso.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}