Too Many Business Requirements from End Users
An ambitious project using MSFA failed due to demand-overload
My company started an ambitious project to run our entire ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system as a web application, and they were prepared to throw a lot of time and resources at the project to make it work.
We hired a consultant who had experience managing large scale projects and also had an extensive background with writing web applications. We even hired additional staff solely for this project. Despite all of our efforts, the project still ended up as a costly failure.
Now, there were a number of reasons why the project failed, but I would like to focus on what I believe to be the most significant problem: “too much, too fast.”
First, let me provide a little background on the software that we are currently using for our ERP. It is approximately 10 years old, and extremely limited in what it can do. Although it supports some standards such as SQL (a given for any database application) it has a number of bugs that prevent these features from being usable, meaning complex workarounds are necessary for almost every facet of our business.
There are upgrades for the software that fix these bugs and expand functionality, but since it is an “off the shelf” retail application upgrading all of our existing systems is prohibitively expensive. Especially considering that the most recent version would not satisfy all of our business needs and would only be viable as a temporary solution anyway.
We have done pretty well with what we have available, but it is just not enough. Admittedly, many of the problems we have are not with the software itself but with how we use it (and abuse it).
This project, which we started in november of 2007, was not the first attempt to migrate from our disfunctional ERP system, however it was the first attempt we had made using a proven methodology instead of just “winging it”.
You may have heard of Microsoft Foundations for Agile Software Development (MSFA) before, which is the methodology recommended to us by our consultant.
Part of this process involved defining Business Rules (what the current software does now), Business Requirements (what the new software would be required to do), and Use Cases (examples of how the current software is used).
All of this is intended to give a very clear definition of what functionality in the old system needs to be preserved in the new system, and what it will be expected to do better.
So if we allocated plenty of resources for the project, followed a proven methodology, and had experience from failed projects in the past, then why did this project fail? I believe the reason that had the largest impact was the fact that the end users both defined the business requirements and approved them.
Needless to say, this is a recipe for disaster since end users are focused on entirely different problems than developers are. I’d hate to use a car analogy, but if we were building a car, the end users would be more worried about leather seats and air conditioning, while we the developers are just trying to get the engine and transmission to work together so that we can move forward.
Now don’t get me wrong here, nobody knows more about what a system should do than the end users, since they are the ones who have to put up with it.
Ideally, they could provide a wish list of things they want the system to do and the developers could prioritize them based on how feasible they are. Unfortunately, there were several people at each development team meeting that probably should not have been, prioritizing power windows as more important than having a windshield.
Although this project left a bitter taste in my mouth, I learned a lot from it.
As of today I have been told that the project “isn’t dead, it’s just sleeping”, suggesting that we will pick it up again sometime when there is less going on.
Fortunately, I’m not that naive and I can see that the project as we envisioned it this time around is not only no longer reasonable, but should not even be considered desirable.
What we need is to get back to the source of the problems we are having now, and carefully work out as much of the details as we can before we start hiring additional resources to help.
News - Pseudorant is now part of Technorati
Pseudorant Has Joined the Technorati Cult!
Hey all! I am just posting to say that Pseudorant is now part of Technorati. Technorati is a search engine for blogs which acts in many ways as a social networking site allowing authors to connect with one another and keep each other informed of updates.
This post is actually part of the signup process to confirm that Pseudorant is indeed owned by Paul. 
Even though this is a confirmation post for verification on the Technorati website I decided I would leave it up so users are aware of other places they can find me on the web!
Once again thanks for checking out Pseudorant!
Blog Theme Change & Other Errands
What have I been up to?
Hey all! To the 80 readers I had today thanks for stopping by! I’m guessing about 30 of them were me having not logged into WP, and I keep getting counted in the stats.
I’m sure all of you have noticed the new look. What? You have never been to the site before? As shocked as I am, I’d like to mention that my blog now has a new look. I have decided to go with a new theme that will allow me to layout my blog in a more effective way for my readers.
The theme I am using now is called WP-Multiflex-3 1.3 by Ainslie Johnson. I really liked the 3 column layout and feel this will give me more flexibility in how I can organize the site. You should see some small improvements and changes over the next week as I work on the rough edges.
I have been so busy today that I didn’t really have any time to post a guide so I decided to outline my day, and why I’m exhausted right about now.
A friend took me and my fiancée out to dinner last night at Granite City (a restaurant in Madison). It was really fun and we had a few drinks and lots of laughs.
I decided to update my WordPress theme when I got home. I have been doing so much research on blogging lately that I was pretty tired when I finally got around to doing the update and went to bed soon after.
You may have also noticed that I now have some plugins running on the site. The ones to note are the “Homepage Excerpts” which makes my site much more readable by condensing the previous posts listed on the page.
Another cool plugin I am trying out is the “Subscribe to Comments” plugin which sends anyone who comments on a post an email when there have been replies. I felt this is VERY important considering how many comments I receive per day. 
(I currently have zero comments on the blog but just think, you could be the first!)
When I got up this morning I realized I needed to mow the lawn. For those of you who know me you probably know that I have just recently moved into my first home. Because of this I had no idea what to expect the first time I mowed this lawn. The scariest thing about my yard is a giant hill I have in the back. I tried to tackle this hill with my non-propelled push mower and ended up falling down the hill in the process. I now have nice green stain on the butt of the only pair of pants I have to wear to work. Go figure.
After that my fiancée and I went out to get her a new cell phone. The reason we had to get her a new phone is because she was switching over to my phone plan. I had been against cell phones for the longest time until I saw the Apple iPhone and I went out and bought one the first week they were out.
Since I hate cell phones so much I tend to only use my iPhone to go online, send email and sometimes text message. Because of this I have over 2050+ rollover minutes saved up that my fiancée has been dying to use.
She ended up going with a Samsung phone that she is currently yakking away on. She also just informed me that her best friend is also on AT&T so it doesn’t use up minutes for the two of them to talk all night long. Like she needs more incentive to talk on the phone all night. >.<
After getting the phone we headed down to hardware store because my parents were going to buy us a grill and bird bath as a house warming present. I picked out a nice Weber charcoal grill, some tongs and charcoal. I can’t wait to use it for the first time.
We also ended up going to “Wild Birds” off Old Sauk road (in Madison) to buy a bird bath and some bird seed. It is amazing to me how much stuff specialty stores can carry. The staff at Wild Birds was very helpful and I ran into a sales guy that wanted to tell me everything about bird baths, feeders, and bird seed.
I was already pretty worn down after having almost killed myself mowing so I smiled and nodded along.
I like watching birds in my backyard but I would say I am far from how involved some of the bird enthusiasts out there are. To me throwing down seed in the grass and watching some birds root around for it, is as complex as my setup needs to be.
I am sure I will post some follow-ups in the future with how the bird colony that is forming in my backyard has grown to dangerous proportions.
Tonight my plan is to study up on some other things about my blog. I would really like to get to a point where I feel as though I can focus solely on content, but I think as with anything in computers it will be a constant learning process.
I hope everyone else is having an interesting weekend. Feel free to leave some comments and make use of the new layout and plugins! I’d be interested to hear what other people in Madison and around the country are up to. Enjoy it while you can, the weekends always seem to shoot by and then it’s back to work!
Time Keeps on Slipping … into the Past?
Pseudorant - March 31st 2008
Ok, here is the Pseudo Rant of the day.
A friend emailed me this and I got a good laugh. It comes back to my whole point of people having too much free time on their hands. Sure, I have too much free time on my hands too. I maintain a Blog for god sake! But really it all comes down to how we choose to waste our time.It’s funny because I have people tell me a lot of the time that they couldn’t do this or that because they were “Busy”. Yet somehow as a home owner, who works full time, does repairs around the house and spends time with the wife, I still find time to do the things that others chalk up as a “waste of time”.
This comes back to a theory I have about how every person wastes resources how they see fit. Yet if you were to ask these people, they would not consider it a waste. For example, I used to take my wife out to eat all the time before we owned our house. I commented about this to a friend whose response was “Yeah that must get expensive. What a waste…”
Yet this same person would go out and buy two $60 video games a week, play them for 4-5 hours and then forget about them. I understand the collector mentality but look at what has happened here. The person who burns $120 a week for 8 hours of electronic recreation passes judgment on the people who spend $80 a week for 8 hours of luxury recreation.
This works the same way with time. I have always enjoyed playing video games. I especially enjoy playing MMORPGs. There have been times in the past where family and friends have passed judgment on me for the amount of time I have devoted to this hobby. The same family that spends an average of 4-5 hours a night in front of the TV, and the same friends that spend their nights socializing at bars and parties.
This is another conflict of perspective. To them I am the one wasting my time. But to me they are the ones who accomplish nothing while rotting their brain in front of the TV, or by socializing all night with strangers. In the end, what do they have to show for it?
I have a substantial gain I can show. My “wasted” time has lead to another guide being written, or an accomplishment in an online game, or getting my MP3s organized, or numerous other things. Everyone has very different priorities.
The point of this rant is not to pass judgment on the people who judge me. It’s to paint a picture that “waste” is all in the eye of the beholder. There is not one person that is free from this cycle. Whether it’s wasting your money on video games, entertainment, socializing, drugs, traveling, dining, it’s all the same. We will all find our accepted way of wasting resources.
With that being said I do not retract my original comment about someone having too much free time on their hands for creating something like this. In fact more power to them. I can tell just from watching that this must have taken forever to create. While to me this seems like a waste of time, the by product of that waste of time did lead to some entertainment for me.
With that being said, sit back and watch. The only real point of this post was to link to this project. Take the post itself for what you will, but enjoy the information below.
Man you gotta check this out. Its pretty sweet.
01. Go to START, RUN, then type CMD
02. Then type TELNET, and press Enter
03. Then the letter “O”, and press Enter
04. then type towel.blinkenlights.nl enter
[Thanks to Netzer for sending me this interesting bit of info.]
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