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Organisation

Influence on the Multinational development

Aspects of organisation were critical or important in almost all areas of the development at Multinational. The two main organisations involved in the development were the new company X and the developers, GIS, in X-Group. However development was also affected by the other companies in the group whose systems X was using (eg XUK) and to a lesser extent by the suppliers of the database package, Sybase. The organisations influenced the development in four ways.

The structure of X, both organisationally and physically influenced the conception and construction of Multinational. In particular the formation of X as a separate company (C.1.1c) was an important driver in its conception, and the subsequent growth and change in focus of X (C.1.2f, C.2.5f) were important in raising the profile of the system. The ambitious decision to install the system in three countries in phase I was based on the structure of X (C.1.4c). Existing systems, both manual and IT, influenced the conception of Multinational by providing a driving force for a new system (C.1.1c, C.1.3c) and delivery by being a barrier to the introduction of the system (C.3.2b).

Organisational culture was widely blamed for the difficulties in getting the underwriters to use the system. While this may not have been the most important reason for their non-use, organisational culture was critically influential in both the conception and delivery of the system. The most important aspects of this were the attitude to getting the business that was shared by many of the senior management and underwriters (C.1.1f, C.3.1a) and senior management attitude to the accuracy of the data (C.3.2a). The difference in attitude displayed by Services to the system can partly be explained by the different focus of their work (C.3.1a).

Although there is some evidence of organisational learning having a beneficial influence during the development of the Multinational system (C.2.1i), there are more instances of the organisation failing to learn from early work (C.2.4e).

The relationship with an external organisation, the Sybase supplier, was critically important during the development (C.2.3f).

Implications for the Multinational development

Understanding the impact of the organisation on development can have less direct impact on how projects are conducted than an understanding of the influence of individuals because it is rarely possible to change the organisation. Nevertheless by understanding the impact, developers can either accept the organisational influences or make greater efforts to overcome them.

The decision to install phase I in three countries simultaneously was driven by business needs rather than methodological considerations (C.1.4). Given that America were so unsuccessful at using the system it had to be relaunched eighteen months later (S.8.7) and the size of the system put a strain on the development, it would obviously have been better to have installed in America later. I think an understanding of the influences of the organisation would have allowed the developers to consider more carefully the choice of countries for initial installation. Furthermore an awareness of the impact of organisational culture would have enabled them to predict the installation problems in America and so leave its installation to later.

One of the other major problems of the system, the update and quality of the data, would have been eased by more account being taken of organisational culture (C.3.1). The IT Strategy highlighted that there would be difficulties in persuading the underwriters to update their data (C.3.1a) but this was not taken seriously enough by the developers. The development of the system was used to bring about organisational change by unifying the systems from the different companies that formed X (C.3.2c). A recognition of the importance of existing systems may have persuaded the development team to spend more time considering these systems and deciding how to bring about the unification of the procedures and classification systems.

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© Clare Tagg 2000