Outsourcing Issues on Teagan Case - Essay Example

TEGAN CASE Was outsourcing the A/P project the right move for Tegan given the other possible alternatives? There were three major options out forTegan at the very initial stage when it wanted an outfit or avenue to get the accounts payable project implemented. Critical evaluation of the other options shows clearly that each of them was going to have its own limitations. For example the selection of the enterprise resource planning system to use SAP was going to levae the company with huge financial cost if the company wanted exclusiveness with all the accounting modules. Hitherto, the accounting modules are extremely important for the cause of the account payable cannot be ignored. For the company to be on the economical side; considering the fact that the company does not have a very strong financial background presently, it is suggested that ignoring the SAP was not too wrong a choice. With the rewriting also, the company did not falter so much in not choosing that option. This argument is made against the background that the company does not have the needed personnel to manage that system. Opting for outsourcing was therefore right at the time of the selection. With outsourcing, the company was sure of employing the services of experienced people whose reputation could be trusted based on their previous contracts. 2.What are the tradeoffs involved in having the requirements analysis for a project performed by one of the firms that would ultimately bid on the project? Trade off basically refers to the benefits that will exchanged for undertaking the requirements analysis. Considering the fact that the account payable project is a very huge project that comes with a lot of financial obligation, undertaking requirements analysis was going to be very beneficial in ensuring that the discharging company did not have to make wrong estimate with the needed requirements for the project so that it would get short of budget along the way. As noted in the case study, the winning bidder was going to bear every cost that would come apart from the agreed fee because the contract is a fixed amount contract. The trade off was therefore going to be that the winning bidder would not run at a lost for making wrong estimation and having to seek extra funding to cater for the excesses. 3.Given our journeys through the world of system development methods in recent lectures, discuss the choice of development methodology employed by Hrad Technika. On the surface, it may seem that the software development methodology adopted by the company was the waterfall module. However, the Hrad team themselves note that there was much more rapid over-lapping model than the traditional waterfall system. The over-lapping nature of the module is from the fact that there was an existing system that the project implementers had to rewrite a copy of. To this effect, it can be argued on a technical basis that the methodology was a prototyping. Prototyping has other characteristics that apply exactly in Tegan’s case. For example only selected parts of the whole system were to be constructed on a periodic basis. Even more, prototyping always permits the involvement of the users of the project. In the case of Tegan, this was duly done because in the requirement analysis, the project implementers who are Hrad involved the users, who are Tegan. Finally, the current system to be developed will not be an end in itself but will have to be evolving gradually over time until it becomes a permanent working system at the end of the day. 4.Why did Hrad Technika, the firm that performed the requirements analysis, have scope and requirements problems once the project commenced? Lack of technical support from the parent company, which was Tegan was purposely to blame for the lack of success with the project once it was started. It can be observed that in the course of the requirements analysis, the firm that own the bid who were Hrad Technika were expecting a lot of support from Tegan and so send their requirements analysis progress to them for unward feedback. However, due to lack of needed expertise from Tegan to give the needed technical judgment and appraisal of the requirements analysis, the correspondence was not forthcoming and it was always delayed. Delays are therefore largely to blame. Because of delays and general lack of support from Tegan, the firm that undertook the project made wrong estimation for the requirements analysis because they were not priviledged to have a fairly idea of the real issues on the ground that their contract was supposed to handle. With the quantum of work that was assigned to them, the slightly miscalculation was going to cost them so much especially as the contract was a fixed paying one. 5.The case writers state: "Sadly, Smith knew that “Leadership” and “Commitment”, the paucity of which was blamed for untold IT failures were not the problems here." Critique- do you agree? What do you see as the most important IT management failures here? There is no way Smith can justify himself that leadership and commitment were not to blame for the failure. Anyone who knows the history and track record of Hrad Technika would know that they have achieved a lot of previous successes for several big companies including Tegan itself. For this project to fail under a new management should therefore mean that there was certainly something wrong with leadership. The present leadership was not supportive with the project. The support was lacking because there were no technical expertise in place at Hrad to support the project. There was also poor monitoring of the project and this is a leadership lapse. If the leadership was proactive, it would have organized a training program for the staff of Hrad the very moment it saw that the expertise of internal staff was needed for the successful run of the project. The commitment to do all these was conspicuously missing. 6.Which of the options for moving forward that Tegan identified would you recommend? For the future, the use of SAP is advised for the company. This is because the use of SAP is very modern, advanced and above all familiar with a lot of bigger firms today. This means that getting expertise to man and support the project will not be difficult at all. Monitoring of the system after its implementation will also not be difficult because in case of any vqacancy, it will be easier to get a replacement. It is admitted the selection of SAP may bring a lot of financial cost to the company but it must be noted that the end justifies the means. This means the eventual benefits that will be derived from the system must be the focus now and not the present cost that it will bring. Read More