One of the features of village life that the experts noticed was the considerable time the women spent going quite long distances to bring back water in jars to their hurts.
Solution
By identifying the problem in the village, the villagers were approached by foreign aid workers with a view to making their lives easier.
The experts considered this problem and came up with a fairly low-tech solution to ease the women’s burden.
Result
The overall result is failure of implementation of technology or Information system (IS) because collectively the women decided not to use the taps the IS providers provided.
The failure of the implementation
The main problems of implementing Information System are to define what is to be evaluated as in our case we see the followings:
1. People involved
The villages (local people) were approached by foreign aid workers to solve the problems they have faced. The reason why it is failure can be that the IS provider are foreigners so it can cause the misunderstandings of what to implement and poor co-ordination of effort. Such major strategic change often demands major cultural or attitude change which, according to Gestalt psychology, is the alteration of feelings, beliefs or behaviours and creates a need for rebalance. Culture is the level at which knowledge and unconscious basic assumptions and beliefs are shared by all members, relative to the IS providers perception of reality, thinking, feeling and problem-solving.
I think that even the IS providers are professionally experienced they could have problem with understanding of different culture people, their issue, their real need and vision.
2. Facts finding failure or not clear statement of requirements
Research shows that historically a lack of communication between project workers has led to some spectacular development failures. Culture may have a positive or negative influence on communication.
Natural language is more than a means of sharing information - it is part of our identity - allowing the sharing of ideas, emotions and attitudes. May be the user’s requirements could change. The experts probably did not facilitate their requirements and the IS does not suit the complete requirements including effectiveness because requirements (and benefits) appears to be a combination of quantitative often tangible elements e.g. budget, time, safety and manpower and qualitative, esoteric and often intangible elements e.g. creativity, team collaboration.
Assume that it is lack of manpower, budget, and time that lead to implement the low-tech solution to villagers.
I think in our case we have two types of people local and foreigners so the culture and different language of communication lead a negative influence in implementation of IS.
And second of all I think the experts have problems to explain to locals how to effectively use the technology. So the users are facing the problem to use it.
3. Observation failure or technology failure
Assume that the experts make a wrong decision on implementing new technology because the technology does not suit their lives and their life style.
Tuman & Williams’ (2002) propose reality-based project management which aims to make the best use of existing resources and ensure that systems and information are adequate and effective before investing in potential costly new resources or, as described by Ward & Griffiths (1998), throwing technology at the problem.
The new technology could include unexpected value and wrong value. I think they could better improve the current system rather than implement new and useless because complexity, continues changes in technology may result failure.
4. User involvement
Another reason given for the failure of IS can be that the foreign aid committee embarked on the project without the full support of the end users.
5. Not satisfied performance of IS providers
Non-financial performance may be task-related performance that measures a team’s ability to produce a technically successful system within budget and on time and people related performance, which measures the quality of team member’s interaction and satisfaction of team members.
| Causes of failure | <><><><> Effect of failure on the project | <><><><>
| Design and definition failure Decision-making failure Project discipline failure Supplier management failure People failure | <><><><> Ultimately, failure is designed in Ultimately, a failed project evolves Ultimately, the project moves, unacknowledged, into failure, costs escalate Ultimately, the project focuses its energies on blame for failure Ultimately, the project delivers failure | <><><><>
IT project managers failed to meet deadlines and budgets
- Unrealistic deadlines or a lack of understanding of the deadlines
- Changes in specification from management and clients
- Differences in the amount of training undergone by project managers
Successful implementation requires an organised process guided by sound models grounded in shared professional expertise/experience, observations and facts and targeted toward realistic goals. The main factors influencing the outcome of implementations are people issues, technology and processes.
If tangible, quantitative and intangible, qualitative elements are included into the requirements definition, benefit delivery and measurement perhaps the percentage of measurable benefits delivered may be increased from the current 25%.
1) Top management support
Leadership is essential during periods of change and projects need a strong business commitment to making them work. The increase and maintenance of sponsor support demonstrated through top down leadership or direction is also important to increase the chance of success.
2) Evaluating the project outcome
Project outcome may be defined as the extent to which a team meets or exceeds standards in output, organisational commitment and satisfaction of group members. A post project review (PPR) is one way of evaluating the project outcome with the underlying principle that IS/IT implementation may be improved if experience and knowledge was extracted during and retained after the project. The application of experience gathered from all previous implementations which can be applied to a given situation to make sense of it.
3) Stakeholders identification, mapping, management
Determine the optimum number of stakeholders. The philosophy of pre-project partnering is about stakeholders working together before the start of the project to build a foundation for collaboration or collaborative working. This philosophy helps in the identification of key stakeholders, their objectives and potential conflict areas but also demands large investment and commitment before the start of a project.
4) User involvement
The villagers should participate in the process by telling their needs and wants. Then they should plan what to implement, later organise system, then after implement, then operate and control.
5) A clear statement of requirements
No matter that participants are from different culture, country they must make sure that they will solve these problems of misunderstanding for example by hiring translator.
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