Case Study Related to Project Failure in IT- Project Report
Added on 2019-11-26
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AbstractThis paper is an in depth analysis and illustration of how poor leadership and management by project management team can lead to project failure. The choice of leadership and management impact on a project is informed by the huge role played by the project manager in setting goals for staff and in decision making for the project. Therefore the role played by the project manager in determining its success orfailure was the motivation behind choosing this subject. This assessment will use the Denver International Airport Baggage automation system to illustrate how poor leadership can impact on a project. The Denver Airport Baggage Automation system was meant to become the most sophisticated airport system in the world. It was meantto reduce the turnaround time of a plane by more than 30 minutes and hence contributing to increased efficiency in the airport. The project was however marred with a lot of misappropriations and mismanagement as well as poor decision making by the project managers. The project was postponed severally but the initial plan could not be implemented and it resulted in the loss of millions of US dollars.IntroductionThis assessment identifies a case study related to project failure in IT and discusses a critical issue that contributed immensely to the failure of the project. The case study that is used in this assessment is that of Denver International Airport Baggage Handling system. The case study is used to illustrate how poor project management and leadership from the project manager can lead to project failure. The paper begins with an overview of the key issues relevant to this assessment. These issues are outlined in details in the later parts of the essay to help put into perspective how the key issues identified apply in this case. Poor project management and leadership by
project managers has resulted in the failure of many IT projects globally. The failure in projects due to poor leadership and project management is contributed by various issues such as poor decision making by the management of the project (Chemuturi & Cagley, 2010). Incompetence on the part of the project managers as well as disregard of expert advice in aspects that project managers are not specialized in are some of thereasons why projects fail due to poor leadership and project management.Background of the case study. The Denver International Airport Automated Baggage Handling System was bound to be the biggest automated baggage handling system in the world. However, this was not to be because after some few years and after the implementation of the project had begun, the plan and the dream came down crumbling. The project idea came from the increasing need for a bigger capacity airport in Denver city. The city of Denver made a decision to construct a state of the art airport that would put the city on the global map as a hub for air transport and as the best airport in the world. The government decided that the project should cover an area of 140 square kilometers hence making it the largest airport in the US with a capacity to handle more than 50 million passengers each year (Cahl & Schlol 1996). The project was also designed to minimize the time that passengers would take queuing to get their luggage checked and reducing queuing in the airport.At the core of this project was the baggage handling system. An automated baggage handling system would help reduce aircraft turnaround time to approximately 30 minutes. This would increase efficiency in the airport hence offering the airport a competitive advantage that would make it superior to others.The project managers made very costly mistakes in the design of the IT system. The biggest mistake was underestimation of the project complexity by the project managers and designers of the plan. The challenges faced in implementing the
baggage system resulted in the opening of the airport being delayed by more than 17 months (Fox & Van, 2007). The direct costs of this delay such as the interest charged on loans taken to implement this project and the maintenance cost during the period were approximate $1.1M a day (McCarthy, 2010).The decision making by the management as well as their inability to solve the problem that arose during the course of the project played a crucial role in the failure of the project. The management also keeps holding media briefings where they demonstrated the projected failures like how two cars moving at high-speed crashed into each other. When the airport was reopened, it was an embarrassing moment for everyone involved in the project and especially the project managers since the airport was a shadow of what was planned and promised. The projected failed to integrate and automate all concourses and hence a concourse was used by a single airline for outbound planes only.Importance of the key issue under review.Poor project management and leadership from project managers is a very crucial issue in determining the success or failure of aproject. This is because, in every project, there are many people involved and there are many different aspects of a project that needs to be organized and coordinated. The moment a project leader fails in performing any of his/roles the whole project is at the risk of failing. The functions of a project manager include; Leading, controlling,organizing, staffing and planning. Therefore, it is very clear that the project manager holds a very crucial role in determining project success. Without proper leadership in any project, it is highly probable that the decision-making process for the project will be very slow. Since every project is time bound, it is important to complete projects
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