The Project: College Management System;
Background
to the project:
I worked for a small college that wanted to
develop an in-house College Management System that would capture various aspect
of the college management. This was an important project as it was to capture student
information, track student progress from application to graduation and capture
data on Administration (human resources, finance and administration).
The project deliverables included:
- A computer application that would provide real-time
reports on all aspect of college management.
- A web interface to facilitate staff and student login
- Different permission levels for administrators,
sub-administrators, lecturers and students
- An offline backup for information captured by
the system
I was the project manager with responsibility
to plan, organize and coordinate the project.
The project did not succeed.
What contributed to the project’s failure?
As Greer (2010) advises, it is important to
be clear about the project concept to get the support from key people in your
organization. I did
not clarify the project concept and deliverables. All I did was have this meeting
with the Director of Education and the Chief Executive and decided that we
needed an online/ computer application. Halfway into the project, it became obvious
that much more work needed to have been undertaken well before the project commenced.
For starters, I did
not develop a statement of work or a Project Charter (Portny, Mantel,
Meredith, Shafer, Sutton, and Kramer 2008) that formally launched and acknowledged the existence of the project. It
was therefore difficult to access organizational resources (people, equipment,
materials) willing to undertake the project activities.
The lack of a
statement of work was a major hindrance to the success of the project. I was
unclear about the project deliverables from the outset and different mangers
kept on adding functions to the final application. This “scope creep” could not
be contained, as the initial scope of the project had not been outlined. All
stakeholders expected the project to be the panacea to all their headaches with
the present system where each department kept own information and records. Most
of this information was duplicated while some critical information could not be
accessed on time. For instance, the instructor kept student grades, the finance
kept financial records while the admissions needed this information to discuss
with students and sponsors.
The vendors I hired
were also not very competent. This was compounded by the fact that their terms
of reference were vague and kept changing in the life of the project.
The assumptions
that I had made for the implementations of the project were wrong. I initially
had underestimated the size and effort required for the project. No comparative
or feasibility study was undertaken and no benchmarks were set. I also assumed
that staff members critical to the success of the project would be available
for meetings and consultations. This was inherently wrong as they were busy in
their daily responsibilities and could not avail themselves as needed.
Though the chief
executive had implied that we would have access to reasonable finance to
purchase needed computer equipment and other necessary software, the process of
getting the funds released was bureaucratic and tedious. We therefore decided to
skip purchases of critical software and other computer accessories.
By the time the
project was almost complete, the board of the college decided to implement a
different system that could accomplish what we were working on without having
to invest in internal equipment. This was motivated by the fact that our
project was taking too long and the accrediting council needed to have a functional
system by the time they did a site visit. So our project was abandoned
altogether after investing thousands of dollars, lost man-hours and sleepless
night on my part.
I learnt several
lessons about project management from this project. This can be captured using Greer’s
10 Steps to Project
Success( p.5):
Step 1: Define the
project concept, then get support and approval.
Step 2: Get your team
together and start the project.
Step 3: Figure out
exactly what the finished work products will be.
Step 4: Figure out
what you need to do to complete the work products. (Identify tasks and phases.)
Step 5: Estimate
time, effort, and resources.
Step 6: Build a
schedule.
Step 7: Estimate the
costs.
Step 8: Keep the
project moving.
Step 9: Handle scope
changes.
Step 10: Close out
phases, close out the project.
References.
Portny,
S., Mantel, S., Meredith, J., Shafer, S., Sutton, M., & Kramer, B. (2008).
Project Management planning, scheduling and controlling projects. Hoboken. NJ:
John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
