An analytical report to discuss the HEG Infoway project, its implementation and the reasons for its failure.

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An analytical report to discuss the HEG Infoway project, its implementation and the reasons for its failure.

By

Vikramjit Sharma

Submitted as a comprehensive work term report for:

Management Information System

Academic Year 2002/2003, Semester 1

Faculty of Management

The Anglia Polytechnic University


TABLE OF CONTENTS

  1. Introduction                                                                        3
  2. About HEG                                                                        4
  1. Need for project                                                        4
  2. Software development company                                        4

  1. Project Details                                                                        5
  1. Scope of the project                                                        5
  2. System requirement and technologies                                5
  3. Kick off meeting and initial settlements                                5

  1. BIL – Started working on project                                                6
  2. Quality Management system -- at BIL                                        6
  1. Cost of quality                                                                8

  1. Literature review                                                                9
  1. The cost, feature, product spiral                                        9
  2. System failure                                                         11
  3. Measuring system success                                                11
  4. Causes of information success and failure                                12
  5. Causes of implementation success and failure                        14
  6. Project failure – Root causes                                                 16

  1. HEG Project                                                                        17
  1. Reasons for the failure of HEG Project                                18

  1. Conclusion                                                                        20
  2. Recommendation                                                                21
  3. Bibliography and references                                                        22

Appendix A – Scope of project                                                23

Appendix B --        Software development life cycle, Waterfall model                 26


1.0 Introduction

The aim of this report is to discuss the project HEG Infoway. This project can be said to be a failure because of the number of reasons discussed under the various head in this report. Author was the part of this project and had first hand experience about each and everything that presumably went against the project.

First section of this report provides the brief summary about the HEG Company, its requirement and the reasons for giving the project to Software Company called Bhilwara Infotech ltd. Then, under the head literature review, an honest effort is made to provide the literature about the normal causes of failure of software projects.

The second section of this report tries to link these common believes and thoughts of different researchers with this HEG project.

Finally, the report will make appropriate conclusions and recommendations for the making and implementation of successful software projects.


2.0 About HEG

Set up in 1977, HEG is a diversified company with interests in graphite electrodes, textiles, sponge iron & hydropower. From a modest investment made in 1977, today the company is reporting a turnover of Rs. 5720 million (120 million US$). HEG Ltd., a premier company of the LNJ Bhilwara Group is Asia's leading graphite electrodes manufacturer. HEG is an ISO 9002 company.

  • It has the largest integrated graphite electrodes plant in South East Asia & Middle East.
  • Processing technology for the sophisticated UHP (Ultra High Power) Electrodes has been sourced from SERS - a subsidiary of Pechiney, France.
  • Winning the country's top export award (CAPEXCIL) for the last 17 consecutive years.
  • Also won National Top Export Award from the Government of India.

2.1 Need for project:  Since, HEG exports their Graphite electrode in more than 25 countries, they felt the strong need to automate the marketing processes like updating of the potential-customer database, customer database, search the customer and potential customer based on defined criteria, keep track of offerings and pending offering, updation of tour report after returning from customer visit, order management system.

2.2 Software Development Company: For the development of this project, they chose, Bhilwara Infotech Limited (BIL), a software development company from their own group. The need for the group to venture into Information Technology sector bought about the establishment of BIL in February 2000.

Bhilwara Infotech Limited is an IT consulting and services company providing high-end solutions in eCRM, eCommerce, ERP & WAP apart from client server application development, software maintenance, Quality Consultancy, migration and porting. BIL is a SEI-CMM (appendix 1) level 4 compliant company.

3.0 Project Details

3.1 Scope of the project: The details of the scope of the project are provided in appendix 1. It can be broadly divided in seven main parts. These are as follows

  1. World Database Management
  2. Customer Management
  3. Offers, pending offer, offer Feedback
  4. Tour report Management
  5. Order Management
  6. Reports
  7. Admin Module

3.2 System requirements and Technologies: The system will need Microsoft IIS-5.0 web server, a database management system of Oracle8i. The system database would support 1000 users working simultaneous on different consoles. The intended users of the project were pre-defined users. All the pages of the project had to be secure pages and access would be available through proper validation process like username and password.

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BIL used Microsoft’s .Net Framework for development of the project using C# language.

 

3.3 Kick off meeting and initial settlements: The kick off meeting was organized. It included the CEO of both the companies, MR. Surana, for HEG and Mr. Sanjeeva Dubey, for BIL, along with the full marketing team of HEG and the team of programmers of BIL. The price of the project was settled very nominal, as it was the group company and the sole owner of both the companies was same, Mr L. N. J. Money just had to go from the accounting books of ...

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