315
Police cars in many countries run
Automatic Number Plate Recognition
(ANPR) software. Suspicious vehicles
are checked immediately and can be
intercepted without delay.
See also: Stand out in the market 28–31 ■ Gaining an edge 32–39 ■ The value chain 216–217 ■ Forecasting 278–79 ■
Kaizen 302–309 ■ Feedback and innovation 312–13
DELIVERING THE GOODS
eliminating favoritism, the airline
will improve morale, which should
have a positive effect on customer
service, and eventually boost
revenues. Air India also anticipates
that CMS will enhance safety by
improving the company’s ability to
meet strict international regulations
relating to working hours.
However, not all new IT projects
are successful. US investment bank
JP Morgan lost $6 billion in 2012
because a new IT program,
designed to help traders assess the
risks of holding a range of financial
derivatives, failed to work properly.
Managing change
So, how can big IT projects be
best managed in order to achieve
progress, rather than disaster?
In 2005, research carried out by
Lancaster University in the UK
established that the chances of
successfully implementing a new
large-scale IT project increase
when senior management is clear
about what they hope to achieve
from it. A clear set of objectives will
help the IT designers to produce a
system that effectively benefits the
end user. Features that are not
needed add to the cost of the
project, and, in all probability,
make the system less usable.
In Australia in 2005, a plan was
introduced to improve productivity
of traffic police by getting them to
spend more time on the road, and
less in the office. State governments
equipped police cars with relatively
inexpensive Automatic Number
Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras.
Real-time information collected by
police cars was fed, on the road, into
the national database—CrimTrac.
The system made policing more
efficient because officers could use
CrimTrac to identify, and pull over
immediately, stolen cars or vehicles
that had not been taxed or insured.Factors for success
A new IT project also needs to be
a shared vision. Customer-facing
and factory-floor employees shouldknow why the new IT system has
been introduced, have a clear vision
of the benefits of the system, and
receive adequate training. In some
organizations systems might fail
because there is resistance to
change—employees may fear
losing expertise, or even their jobs.
To overcome this, management
needs to communicate openly and
honestly about why the new IT
system is needed. ■To err is human—and to
blame it on a computer is
even more so.
Robert Orben
Comedy writer (1927– )As a rule, software
systems do not work well
until they have been used,
and have failed repeatedly,
in real applications.
David Parnas
Canadian software engineer (1947– )