Building on the lessons learned in CRP0, the implementation team immediately embarked on CRP1. With the team now fully staffed up, the goal of this phase of the project was for each track to make the system work within their specific area. As in earlier work, the emphasis was on getting the system to accommodate Cisco processes without modification. During CRP1, team members generated detailed scripts that documented the purpose for and procedures used to complete a process (see Exhibit 5 for a sample business process script). In order to ensure that all contingencies were accounted for, business process prototype tracking sheets were developed (see Exhibit 6 for a sample prototype tracking sheet). In contrast to CRP0, team members carefully documented the issues they ran across during their modeling. Issues were addressed in weekly three-hour meetings held by the Program Management Office. During these meetings the track leaders from each are worked together to resolve the issues and push the project forward. Modeling during this phase confirmed the concerns about the software. There were huge numbers of business processes that the software could not support.
The implementation team’s response to the gaps found in the system was to develop a means for categorizing and evaluating each one individually. “All modification requests were classified as Red, Yellow, or Green. Each one went to the track leads and anything that was a Red had to go to the Steering Committee for approval.” There were few Reds (see Exhibit 7 for list of “Red” modifications). In the end, 30 developers were needed for three months to modify Oracle to support the business.12 Elizabeth Fee described the process.
When we realized we were not going to be able to go live “vanilla,” we began to work on our modification strategy. The months of July and August were focused on which modifications were we going to do? What’s real and what’s not. In some cases the user would be saying “you know, the date used to be the first thing you type and in Oracle it’s the fourth.” In other cases it was the realization that we would have to hire 100 people on the shop floor to open and close work orders if we did not figure out a way to automate it.
Discovery of the need to modify Oracle led to some unplanned changes in the project plan and budget. In addition to the identification of required modifications, the implementation team also determined that the Oracle package would not adequately support the after sales support needs of the company. As a result, the team embarked on a concurrent effort to evaluate and select a service support package. The package was selected and implemented on a schedule that matched the overall implementation schedule. Cisco planned to go live on both packages on the same day