WHY DID THE NOMIS PROJECT FAILANSWERFrom the given case study, major contributor to the NOMIS project failure is noalignment between IT and others corporate entities. These IT project wasseparated with organization managerial issue. As we know the IT leader and topmanagement must be promotes a partnership between them in order to archivethe business goal and in this case to shot the project completion due to givendateline.According to this article, there are three common reason why this project fail:a) Poor-quality data - The data used to assess the project is inadequate or just plain wrong - A project team may pick up an idea and run with it before critically evaluating desired outcomes and alternatives.
3. QUESTION 1 : WHY DID THE NOMIS PROJECT FAILANSWERb) Optimism Bias - People too confident with the prejudice that the project will be managed through existing resources and archive the project dateline - more focus is given to the results and benefits rather than the project management process.c) Strategic misrepresentation (deception) - Maybe there is incentives to make the project look good in paper in order to get the project approved or to win the contract. - Provide unrealistic cost estimates and delivery timetables
4. QUESTION 1 : WHY DID THE NOMIS PROJECT FAIL (contd…)According to the full report by National Audit Office (NAO) in 2009, below are thereasons for the delay and cost increases by this project.a) There was inadequate oversight by senior management • The senior management (NOMS Board) did not actively monitor the project.b) NOMS did not put appropriate resources and structures in place to deliversuch a complex project. • Overall governance and resources are not equal with the large scale of the project. • The roles and responsibilities of the project team is not clear • Inadequate skills of the resources • The combination of various department make the project complicated.c) Programme management was poor in key aspects, including planning,financial monitoring and change control. • The overall planning is very optimistic and there is no contingency plan. • No budget monitoring. Just monitor on spending rather than matching cost with deliverable. • Change control is weak.
5. QUESTION 2 : GIVEN WHAT YOU HAVE READ WHEN WAS THE PROJECT DOOMED TO FAIL? From the articles, the project doomed to fail estimate in earlier planning of the project. But the management realized it in 2007. At that time, they actually 2 years late. In this year , they had spent £155 million and was two years behind schedule. NAO in their full report stated that NOMS Board made aware of cost overruns for first time in 2007. This project failures can be detected at the beginning of the project, it is because no proper planning and attention to detail process involved in the project. Strategic planning is too important in order to shot the project or business goal. The effects from improper planning occurred in 2007 which wrong time estimation contribute to such situation of project delayed and behind the schedule. Over expenses are happened also due to wrong budget estimation.
6. QUESTION 2 : GIVEN WHAT YOU HAVE READ WHEN WAS THE PROJECT DOOMED TO FAIL? Sources : National Audit Office (NAO), 2009
7. Question 3: Did the human dynamic mention by Dr Mitchell play a role in the NOMIS project failure? Explain?As mention in the article the people who is involve in this project was tooptimize about their belief (*macho management) that they canarchive the goal through the available resource and dateline statedwithout step by step guideline by proper strategic planning. This ismain reason for leading this project into bust : Macho management here is refer to a group of manager who isresponsible to make a decision and belief they had a total right to makedecisions, directing, controlling and enforcing order over a workforce.Ted Ritter in his article on ComputerWeekly.com says that themanagement of the National Offender Management Services didmanage the establish causes of the failure of NOMIS. This prove thatthe human dynamic play a role in the NOMIS project failure.
8. Question 3: Did the human dynamic mention by Dr Mitchell play a role in the NOMIS project failure? Explain?The governance or leadership of this large project must be established tomonitor the project delivery and spending. Roles and responsibilities mustclearly define for example the project team or the technical support team andthey must have adequate skill resources to monitor the customization of thesystem. Because the budget increased when there are no controlled on thesystem customization. Besides that, the management must also have a good supplier management.They must have an SLA (service level agreement) where they clearly statedthe payment scheduling, penalties and change control process. Surprisingly,from the article given, the cost of the project is doubling. Why? Because theyjust spend the money without matching it with the system deliverable.
9. QUESTION 4 :Of the 3 reason why the projects go so wrong, Which reason do you think the most difficult to prevent? Explain?Answer:The most difficult reason to prevent is reason number 2 : Optimism BiasExplain: Optimism bias is the related for people to be overly positive when making predictions about the outcomes of future planned actions. Parameters of the project is heavily influenced by confidence, they overstate the benefits and understate the scale and costs, both capital and operating. Optimism bias results and prognostic influence in policy, planning, management will affect the company. For example, the cost and time required to complete the planned results tend to be underestimated and the benefits for granted as optimistic bias. It is very difficult to eliminate the optimistic bias, however some people believe that trying to reduce the optimistic bias will encourage people to adapt to health-protective behaviors. Optimistic bias cannot be reduced, and that by trying to reduce the optimistic bias the end result was generally even more optimistically biased. Although tried to reduce the optimistic bias through reducing distance, overall, the optimistic bias still remains.
10. QUESTION 4 : The phenomenon of optimism bias regarding organizational dynamics as apotential cause for unrealistic expectations on schedules and budgets.A theoretical framework needs to be introduced to examine how optimism biasregarding organizational dynamics can affect the performance of constructionprocesses. A variety of “what-if” scenarios is tested. It show that managers whomaintain an unbiased attitude during project planning tend to outperform thosehaving either an optimistic or a conservative approach.Optimism bias renders business case unrealistic. For the business case makesrosy assumptions that dont reflect business realities.Optimism bias also cause the expectation, with regard to resources as well astime required, were very unrealistic. This has resulted in consistentlyunderestimated costs and overestimated benefits and delivery delays.The problem is getting bigger, because projects get bigger. So, the goodplanning and back up plan is needed. For large scale of project they must havegood resources and planning.