Analysis of the Queensland Health Payroll Project Failure: Case Study

This report presents a case study analysis of the Queensland Health Payroll (QHP) project, a significant example of project failure. The report identifies the project's objectives, scope, and the critical success criteria, including timely completion, budget adherence, and quality delivery. It delves into the root causes of the project's failure, focusing on inadequate scope management, inexperienced project leadership, ineffective communication, and poor stakeholder management. The analysis highlights the disastrous consequences, such as incorrect payroll payments and significant cost overruns. Furthermore, the report suggests a scope management plan as a recommended model to mitigate similar risks in future projects. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of effective project management practices and the need for comprehensive planning to ensure project success. The report provides a detailed overview of the QHP project, its failures, and potential solutions. It is contributed by a student to be published on the website Desklib, a platform providing AI-based study tools.

Running head: QHP
A case of Project Failure: Queensland Health Payroll Project
Name of Student
Name of University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction..........................................................................................................................2
Discussion on the success and failure criteria of the Project...............................................2
The project.......................................................................................................................3
The Reasons of Failure/ what did they not do well.........................................................3
Suggestions/Recommended Model: Scope Management Plan............................................6
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................7
References............................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
The success of any project is largely dependents on choosing a correct approach of
planning and execution of the project. The report will be discussing a case of project failure to
analyze the main causes of failure. The case study chosen is “Queensland Health Payroll Project”
which is an excellent case of project failure. The payroll implementation was a failure and
several factors contributed to its failure. In the following paragraphs, the QHP project will be
evaluated on basis of the success criteria of the project to judge the major aspects of this failed
project. The accomplishment of any project is reliant on a number of factors which are to be
considered while planning the project. In the following section, the main reasons of failure of the
QHP project is discussed and the model is suggested, which could have helped in reducing the
chances of failure.
Discussion on the failure and Success criteria
Project success criteria can be defined as the standards by which a project, after is
implementation is judged to decide whether it is successful in accordance to the criteria
mentioned by the stakeholders. Some of the basic success criteria linked with any project
includes its timely implementation and implementation of the project within the set budget
(Kerzner 2017, p.40). Along with these two things, it is integral to provide a project of good
quality. Project success criteria is therefore considered to be necessary tools that are mostly used
by the team to ensure effective stakeholder engagement (Cserháti & Szabó 2014, p. 615). The
Queensland payroll system project failed to meet the basis project success criteria which are,
timely project completion, completion of the project within the allocated budget and delivery of
a good quality product. The success criteria of any project is not only related to the project

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delivery, but also related to the management of a project (Meredith, Mantel Jr & Shafer 2017, p.
20). Another significant reason behind the failure of the QHP project is linked with the project
management issues that were faced during the implementation of the project. Lack of
communication, stakeholder unrest and inefficient project planning contributed to the disastrous
result QHP project. The detailed project description and the reasons of failure of the QHP project
are indicated in the following sections.
The project
The Queensland Health Payroll (QHP) system project was rolled out with an aim of
replacing a soon to be out-of-date payroll module (Eden & Sedera 2014, p. 3). The new system
was designed to manage the payroll of 65,000 workers. The project contract was provided to
IBM and the budget set for the entire project implementation was $6.9M. The state agency that
was responsible for management of this payroll initiative was CorpTech. The outcome of this
major project can be described as a spectacular example of project failure that lead to incorrect
payment of 76,000 workers. There were several project management issues, which contributed to
the failure of this project.
The Reasons of Failure/ what did they not do well
From the very beginning of project implementation, several factors were contributed to
the ultimately disastrous conclusion of this complex and an important project. The areas in which
the project did not perform well is mainly related to the project management areas. The various
reasons of failure of this complex project are indicated as follows-
1. In sufficient calculation of the project scope/Scope Management: The QHP project
was “uniquely complex” as the system to be developed was supposed to generate 24, 0000

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different combination of pay for nearly 85,000 workers (Thite & Sandhu 2014, p. 2). The system
was to replace the work of 1010 payroll staffs and 200,000 manual process on 92,000 form.
Although the task was seemingly difficult, the scope of the same was highly misjudged. IBM,
decided to implement this complex system in a minimum time of 7 months with a fear of
existing system going obsolete quickly. Out of the seven months of project implementation, only
two weeks were set for estimation of the project scope, which contributed to failure of the
project. The lack of proper identifiable objective lead to the development of an incorrect project
plan, which in turn contributed to the project failure.
2. Inexperienced project Leadership/ Communication Management: QHP project
implementation was IBM’s first attempt of delivering the project of such a huge size. On the top
of that, IBM tried to implement the project in a significantly smaller time of 7 months (Glass
2013, p. 3). Along with that, the state agency, which was accountable for defining and handling
the scope was not efficient. Neither of the project team showed any efficient leadership. During
the initiation phase of the project, the unsatisfactory and incomplete project scope as developed
by IBM was accepted due to lack of any proper leadership within the team, which in turn
contributed to project failure.
3. Ineffective Project Management/ Stakeholder Management: Management of this
project became even complex on its commencement. Several factors contributed to the
ineffective project management. The key stakeholders of this project included Queensland
Health as the customers, the project team, CorpTech, IBM and Unions representing the QH
Staffs and the “Department of Premier and Cabinet, Public Works and Treasury”. The presence
of too many key stakeholders and lack of proper communication among them was one of the
main reasons why the initial signs of failure was ignored (Paterno & Zhao 2018, p. 8). The QHP

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project showed early signs of failure yet the stakeholders or the project team did not try to re
work on the scope and the plan to put the project on a stable course, as a result, the project failed
miserably.
The key reasons of failure of QHP is specified in the following figure-
Figure 1: Demonstrating the Reason of failure of the QHP project

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(Source: Asgarkhani et al. 2017)
The QHP project was hugely over-budget. The cost in respect to the payments received
by IBM was four times more than the set contract price. On the top of that, the entire project took
three times longer than the original schedule be completed, yet a project pf appropriate quality
could not be delivered.
On analysis of the major caused of project failure, ti can be indicated that the QHP
project could not meet any of the basic success criteria linked with the project. Furthermore, the
business processes that was designed to deliver the payroll was ineffective that proves the
inefficiency of the team in handling a critical project like payroll system implementation. The
payroll system that was delivered was of poor quality that resulted in inaccurate payroll payment
with defective or missing functionality (Herniter & Maasberg 2018, p. 10). Since the project
showed early signs of failure, there was chances of rectifying the mistake. The key cause of
project failure as analyzed from the findings above, is inappropriate identification of the project
scope along improper leadership model.
Suggestions/Recommended Model: Scope Management Plan
The scope management is a vital aspect of project management and the failure of the
QHP project was largely because of futile scope management. The analysis of the management
issues indicate that proper time was not allocated for identifying project scope, which mainly
contributed in project failure.
The drastic failure of the QHP project could have been avoided if sufficient amount of
time was given by the team in management of the scope. The scope management is a procedure
of defining all the works to be executed in a project (Blaskovics 2016, p. 270). Scope

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management plan generally incorporates a detailed comprehensive technique of defining the
work that are needed to be executed in a project. Scope management plan details the process of
determination, managing and controlling of all the project processes (Nath & Momin 2014, p.
282).
The time of two months was insufficient for QHP scope planning and therefore, a time of
at least 6 months were to be allocated for scope identification and project planning, considering
the complexity of the project. Apart from that was foremost necessary to communicate the
project scope to all the team members and stakeholders (Adam & Danaparamita 2016, p. 127).
Ineffective communication within the team members and the stakeholders was the primary
reason for project failure. Proper communication among the team is of foremost necessity to
ensure effective project management. In QHP project the proposed technique and process of
scope management was to be followed to eliminate the key reason of project failure and ensure
project success (Zulch 2014, 1003). Along with that, an improved stakeholders’ collaboration
was necessary. The issues in stakeholders’ collaboration can be traced back to the ineffective
communication that resulted in incorrect information flow among the team.
Conclusion
The report provides a comprehensive idea of the key issues that lead to the QHP project
failure. The success criteria associated with an undertaken project is defined in the report. The
most basis criteria of project success involves delivery of an undertaken project within the set
time and budget and in a desired quality. None of the success criteria were fulfilled during the
implementation of the QHP project, and thus, the project can be considered as a classic case of
project failure. The report identifies the key causes of project failure. One of the most critical

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reasons behind the failure of the project was ineffective scope management. Along with that,
improper leadership and communication and ineffective project management largely contributed
to the failure of this project. On basis of the analysis of the reasons of project failure, a scope
management model is suggested for QHP. Proper management of the project scope could have
ensured successful project implementation.
References
Adam, A. R., & Danaparamita, M. (2016, November). Understanding the influence of poor
scope management affecting the successful of an IT Project. In 2016 International Conference
on Information Management and Technology (ICIMTech) (pp. 124-129). IEEE.
Asgarkhani, M., Cater-Steel, A., Toleman, M., & Ally, M. (2017, December). Failed IT projects:
Is poor IT governance to blame?. In Proceedings of the 28th Australasian Conference on
Information Systems (ACIS 2017). Australian Association for Information Systems.
Blaskovics, B. (2016). The impact of project manager on project success—The case of ICT
sector. Society and Economy. In Central and Eastern Europe ǀ Journal of the Corvinus
University of Budapest, 38(2), 261-281.
Cserháti, G., & Szabó, L. (2014). The relationship between success criteria and success factors in
organisational event projects. International journal of project management, 32(4), 613-624.
Eden, R., & Sedera, D. (2014). The largest admitted IT project failure in the Southern
Hemisphere: a teaching case. In Proceedings of the 35th International Conference on
Information Systems: Building a Better World Through Information Systems. AISeL.

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Glass, R. L. (2013). The Queensland Health Payroll Debacle. Information Systems
Management, 30(1), 89-90.
Herniter, B., & Maasberg, M. (2018). IT Project Crisis and Escalation.
Kerzner, H. (2017). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and
controlling. John Wiley & Sons.
Meredith, J. R., Mantel Jr, S. J., & Shafer, S. M. (2017). Project management: a managerial
approach. John Wiley & Sons.
Nath, A., & Momin, M. M. (2014). Project scope management: A pivotal tool for project's
success. International Journal of Management, IT and Engineering, 4(8), 279-288.
Paterno, P., & Zhao, S. (2018). Queensland Health: Australia's Healthcare IT
Catastrophe. Proceedings of the Northeast Business & Economics Association.
Thite, M., & Sandhu, K. (2014). Where is my pay? Critical success factors of a payroll system–A
system life cycle approach. Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 18(2).
Zulch, B. G. (2014). Communication: The foundation of project management. Procedia
Technology, 16, 1000-1009.

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