Write a report summarizing: - for each project selected, a brief summary of what

Question

Write a report summarizing:

-           for each project selected, a brief summary of what occurred

-           significant common factors evident in all failures that contributed to the project failures

Hershey Foods Corporation

In 1996, Hershey’s set out to upgrade its patchwork of legacy IT systems into an integrated ERP environment. Despite a recommended implementation time of 48 months, Hershey’s demanded a 30-month turnaround so that it could roll out the systems before Y2K. Based on these scheduling demands, cutover was planned for July of 1999. This go-live scheduling coincided with Hershey’s busiest periods – the time during which it would receive the bulk of its Halloween and Christmas orders. When the systems went live in July of 1999, unforeseen issues prevented orders from flowing through the systems. As a result, Hershey’s was incapable of processing $100 million worth of Kiss and Jolly Rancher orders, even though it had most of the inventory in stock. Hershey's revenues dropped by 12% during the third quarter of 1999 compared to the third quarter of 1998.

Explanation / Answer

Answer,

It appeares that Hershey had set out to upgrade its patchwork of legacy IT systems into an integrated ERP environment in a rushed manner as is evident that he demanded a much lower implementation time than the recommended time. Although the cut-over was planned but Hershey did not planned for any contingencies as is evident that o-live scheduling coincided with Hershey’s busiest periods. Hershey did not anticipated go live issues. he ccould have opted for a Parallel running approach. The approach is simple, whre data is simply moved to the target environment but it is ensured that the data in each system is still current. This typically involves dual-keying or some other form of data synchronisation.

The benefits of Parallel approach are that one can run each system in parallel for a period of time so the business can fully validate and sign-off the platform, safe in the knowledge that it completely meets their needs. The disadvantage is cost, maintaining two environments is clearly more expensive than maintaining one.

However, it would definitely be less than the loss of $100mn suffered by Hershey’s.

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