Assignment on Myers Online Shopping Disaster

Running head: MYERS ONLINE SHOPPING DISASTER
Myers Online Shopping Disaster
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction:...............................................................................................................................2
Main Issues Associated with the Project:...................................................................................2
Failures with Early Implementation of the Project:...................................................................3
Cost Overrun and Schedule Delays:..........................................................................................4
Early Delivery Methods for the Project:....................................................................................5
Changes in the Recent Delivery Method:..................................................................................7
Recommendation for the Project Delivery:................................................................................8
Conclusion:................................................................................................................................9
References:...............................................................................................................................10

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Introduction:
The information technology projects or the IT projects are very much essential to
introduce new technologies to the societies. One common aim of this type of IT projects is
making the human life easier by introducing new type of technologies (Maruping et al. 2019).
The IT projects are quite sensitive and it is very much essential that this type of projects must
be executed carefully. Any type of issues in the project can become the reason of project
failure.
In recent times, there are several of IT projects in Australia which have been failed
due different kind of reasons. One of the important recent IT projects of Australia which
failed is the Myers online shopping disaster. In this project near about ten million dollars
were invested on the development of a website for boosting the online sales. The site was
developed poorly that it crashed every time when there is a high amount of traffic. The stock
clearance sales were complete disaster due to the system outage. As the website failed to
fulfil its main project goals, ultimately the project got failed. In this report this Myers online
shopping project will be evaluated and the main reason due to which the project was failed
will be analysed.
Main Issues Associated with the Project:
As the current project of Myers online shopping was failed a brief analysis of the
project is done and it has been identified that the main reason due to which the project
become failed is the communication breakdown. There were several of issues which led the
project in this situation and the project ultimately failed. Later the issue with the website
project were solved and the website become live again. Though the issues associated with the
project were solved but due to the random crash of the website Myer lost their reputation and
many customers. Also, this project also failed to support the business at the peak time as

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many orders of the customers were cancelled due to the website crash and during that time
Myer also failed get new orders from the customers. This all factor justified the failure of the
project though the website is currently functioning. Over optimistic expectation was the main
issue due to which the project was failed completely (Vasishth et al. 2018). As per the
expectation of Myer this would have been revolutionized their online sales but in reality,
these expectations were too high which was the main reason project failure.
Failures with Early Implementation of the Project:
The failures regarding early project employment varies for different type of project. In
this case also, there are some specific measures which led towards the failure of early project
execution. The early failure for this project was that it crashed during the peak load. It means,
at the normal times this website worked quite fine without any type of issues. During the
peak time when there was huge number of customers tried to access the website it eventually
crashed. Due to this reason, Myer made this website down for several times. The ultimate
disaster happened with the website at the stock clearance sale during the boxing day when the
website totally crashed and become inaccessible. There were various of reasons due to which
the website project was failed. The potential reason was that Myer was not completely
involved with the project (Schultz et al. 2019). As Myer was not involved with the project it
missed the website developer team missed many of the details regarding the project and
ultimately this missed details created several of issues with the developed product which was
the website in this case. Also, lack of clean data is another potential reason for the failure of
early project implementation (Baghai 2017). In this aspect it has been assessed that Myer not
provided correct information about their customer base due to which the website was not
prepared according to that. As the developers were not having proper data about the customer
base of the Myer, they failed to scale the website according to that. Also, another potential
reason which contributed to failure in early employment of the project is lack of process and

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technology (Simpao, Gálvez and Cannesson 2017). The process and technology used for the
website development project was not appropriate. From the failure of the project it can be
concluded that some low-quality engineering was used for completing the project due to
which the website failed to take the load of increased number of customers. Thus, these are
the main failures that have been identified with the early project implementation.
Cost Overrun and Schedule Delays:
The cost overrun and the schedule delays are one of the major problems with all type
of problem which also affects the IT projects. The cost overrun is a situation where cost of a
project is increased compared with the initial calculations. There are various of reasons due to
which the project cost can be increased. The most common reason due to which the overall
project cost got increased is the delays in the schedule of the project (Larsen et al. 2016). The
schedule delay is another situation in the project management where the project takes a
higher amount of time to complete compared with initial calculations. There are several of
reasons also due to which delays in the project schedule occurs. One of the vital factors
which contributes in the project schedule delays is the complexity of the project (Guida and
Sacco 2019). Projects with high complexity often misses the deadline of the project. Other
factors due to which the projects miss the deadline and schedule delay occurs is the scope
changes in the project, design related error and improper procurement of the project. The
other reasons due to which the cost overrun occurs for a project are the poor communication
among the project team members (Bagaya and Song 2016), project design issue on a serious
level, poor management of the project and not hiring appropriate team for the project.
In the current context the project of Myers online shopping also faced both the issues
of cost overrun and the delays in schedule. The cost overrun for the project occurred for
mainly two reasons. The first reason for the cost overrun was very much common which was

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the project schedule related delay and the second reason for the cost overrun was hiring
inappropriate team for the project (Segelod 2017). There were some specific factors which
contributed towards project schedule delay for the project. For this project an inappropriate
project team was hired any they failed to deliver the project as per the requitement of the
organization. Due to this factor organization needed to solve the issue of often crash of the
website due to which they needed to spend an extra amount of budget and in this way the
overall project budget got overrun. The specific reason due to which the project schedule got
delayed are the complexity of the project and the major issue in the design of the project (Dao
et al. 2017). The current project was having a high complexity and it largely contributed to
the delay in the project schedule. Also, there were some design issues in the project as proper
information about the customer base of Myer was not conveyed to the project development
team (Hershberger et al. 2017). Due to these two reasons the project of Myers online
shopping faced of the cost overrun and the delays in schedule.
Early Delivery Methods for the Project:
For delivering a different types of project various type of project delivery approaches
are existing. Widely used methods for the project delivery are the design-bid-build,
construction management multi prime, construction management at risk and the last one is
the design-build.
The current project was an e-commerce website development project and depending
on that criteria design-build methods have been used for the project delivery purpose. The
design-build technique of project delivery is crucial methods of delivery of project that has
been used for many of the past major projects (Bingham, Gibson Jr and Asmar 2018). There
are some crucial reasons behind selecting this project delivery method. First, this project
delivery method is a straightforward method that can be used by the owners. The main

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benefit of utilizing the current method of project delivery is that risk is minimised by a large
factor by using this project delivery method. Myer was not very much aware about this type
of website development projects and for this reason they wanted provide least input to design
process of the project. Due to this reason current process of project delivery is applied for this
project. For this project delivery technique both of the construction and design the of the
project is done by a single organization. There are various of benefits of executing the
method of design-build of project delivery due to which this method might be employed for
this project (Yu, Shen and Shi 2017). As in this type of process of project delivery both of the
design and development of the project is done by a single firm fewer changes are required for
the final project which leads towards a high amount of cost. This is one potential reason for
implementing this method for the project delivery. Another benefit of this project delivery
method is that project tends to get completed faster by using this method (Shrestha and
Fernane 2017). At that time an e-commerce solution was very much important for Myers and
for this reason the design-build method of project delivery is utilized.
Though the design-build project delivery method was having several of methods
benefits, there are some important drawbacks of using the selected project delivery method.
For current project delivery methods, the project team does not prepare any type of
architectural designs as they are dependent on the design provided by the project owner
(Hoseingholi and Jalal 2017). In such events, the project owner may not have enough skills to
develop the design of the project and due to this reason inappropriate design can be provided
to the project team which happened due to using the design-build project delivery method.
Also, while using the design-build method of project delivery the owner of the projects needs
to lockdown all the requirement of the project much earlier. Thus, integration of the
improvement in the project becomes impossible to add. Also, for this project delivery method
the owner of the project needs to sacrifice some of the control of the project due to some

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unavoidable circumstances (Mohareb and Maassarani 2018). This is one potential reason
which made the project vulnerable and ultimately the project becomes a failure.
Changes in the Recent Delivery Method:
As the project was facing several of issues due to the use of above-mentioned design-
build method, new project delivery technique implemented which is integrated method of
project delivery. The integrated process of project delivery is based on the teamwork and the
collaboration facto which helped to fixed the above identified issues (Deese, Ahmed and
Russell 2017). The primary goal of implementing the integrated project delivery is spreading
the liability, risk and responsibility among all the stakeholder associated with the project.
There were several of advantages of using the integrated project delivery which helped to fix
the issues that have been identified previously. This type of project delivery method increased
the overall chances of project success compared with the previous cases as all the contracted
participants were available to the project owner before starting the project (Mesa, Molenaar
and Alarcón 2016). Also, in this case, incentive system is implemented by the owner of the
project to align the goal of each and everyone in the project which again increased the
success rate of the project. In integrated project delivery digital tools has been also used
which are designed specifically for the project team and the collaboration among the team
members largely boosted the success of the project.
Apart from solving the issues with the project, the integrated project delivery also
provided some other extra benefit to the project. First, the integrated project delivery
established that there is transparency throughout the execution process of project. In this type
of project, the team members shared their ideas and the costs and profit from the project was
open to all (Pishdad-Bozorgi and Beliveau 2016). Also, there was no hidden agendas
regarding the project. All the information flowed throughout the project without any type of

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barriers. As all the information of the project was transparent to all it helped to take better
decisions and eventually also helped to develop a better product. Also, the integrated project
delivery provided extra value to the project. In this project delivery method, the experts
associated with the project is always active at the beginning of the project that they
proactively eliminated all types of project barriers and helped to evolve the project in much
safer, better and quicker way.
Recommendation for the Project Delivery:
From the previous discussion it has been assessed that the appropriate project delivery
method plays an vital role for successful accomplishment of the project. With appropriate
project delivery methods there are several of other factors which contributes towards
successful accomplishment of a project. In the following section some important
recommendations are discussed, by following which the project could have executed
successfully in the earlier stage.
 The first criteria for a successful project are that all the stakeholder of the project has
understood the actual requirement of the project. Thus, in this aspect recommendation
is provided regarding that all the stakeholder of the project should understand the
project requirement before execution of the project.
 The current project of Myer’s online shopping website faced several of risks but there
are was no appropriate risk response team to handle the risk. Thus, another
recommendation is development of a risk response team.
 Also, from the analysis it has been assessed that there was a huge communication gap
between the project stakeholders and due to this, the project failed to fulfil its main
requirement. Thus, establishment of effective communication process is another
recommendation provided in this context.

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 Current website development project also lacked appropriate monitoring and tracking
of the project due to which there were several of issues. Thus, it is recommended to
establish proper monitoring and tracking measures of the project which must be done
on a daily basis.
Conclusion:
From the above discussion it can be concluded that the Myer’s online shopping
website development project completely failed due to utilization of inappropriate project
delivery methods. The developed website failed to fulfil its criteria and eventually crashed
when high amount of traffic applied into it. In this report, the main issues that related with the
project has been identified. In this aspect several of important issues have been identified. In
the following section of this report failures regarding early project implementation have been
identified. Following that cost overrun and the schedule delays that were related with the
project have been identified. In this project a specific type of project delivery methods has
been used regarding early project delivery and this project delivery method have been
discussed briefly in this report. Following the early delivery technique of the project, changes
in the recent delivery technique used for the project have been identified. In the further
section of this report recommendation have been shared for successful closure of this project
that could have been taken in the early stage of the project.

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Hoseingholi, M. and Jalal, M.P., 2017. Identification and Analysis of Owner-Induced
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