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IT profession

Influence on the Multinational development

There were some personal characteristics that had a critical influence on the Multinational development. These are categorised to 'IT profession' rather than 'Individual' because they appear to be shared by many in the IT profession.

The conception of the system architecture was influenced by a preference amongst the developers for a particular technology (C.1.3e). The remaining critical influences were in system construction where a very wide range of skills was required from the IT staff but their interests did not always coincide with what was expected of them (C.2.2e). The developers consistently under-estimated what had to be achieved (C.2.4f) and there was some evidence of 'second system syndrome' (C.2.4a). During construction the difficulty of effectively managing IT staff (C.2.2f) and their view of success (C.2.3b) were important influences. The project was affected by difficulties in recruitment and retention of IT staff but this did not have an important impact on the project (C.2.5h).

Implications for the Multinational development

An understanding and acceptance of these character traits would have helped Gordan and the other project leaders to allow for this in the development.

One of the unfortunate decisions during the Requirements study was the decision to use PCs for the servers rather than Unix (S.9.1). This decision was partly influenced by the increasing power of PC technology but I think the resistance to Unix by some of the developers probably also had an effect (C.1.3e). Being aware that IT staff preferences may not be matched by technical considerations might have convinced Gordan and David to stick with the original plans and thus avoid the Sybase problems.

Similarly an awareness of the general over-optimism his IT staff might have allowed Gordan to schedule more effectively (C.2.4f). IT staff need to have a very wide range of abilities, both business and technical, to do their job and this was generally recognised in the Multinational development (although on occasions there were problems because of lack of ability eg C.3.2f). However, one of the reasons for the problems of phase II was a failure to realise that IT staff may like the challenge of new design work but may not be 'completer/finishers' (C.2.2e).

The Multinational development also illustrated how difficult it was to manage IT staff and really know what they were doing (C.2.2f, C.2.3h). Recognition of this difficulty might have resulted in Gordan being involved in the decision to rewrite phase II.

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© Clare Tagg 2000