A business organisation received some very negative feedback on a recent business partner satisfaction survey.
1) According to the survey, business partners are unsatisfied. Why? An important end-user business application delivered functions with serious quality defects: it was slow in transaction speed, froze regularly, wasn’t integrated with existing ERP, and forced users to execute a number of steps manually. Therefore:
2) Business outcomes are clearly jeopardized, but the IT department did not do anything to address those issues. Why? The application has serious quality issues which cannot be resolved in the short term. IT raised the risk of there being quality issues prior to the release date, but they were ignored. And therefore:
3) The schedule for the integration phase of the project was severely compressed at the request of the business owner. Why? They insisted on delivery by the end of the fiscal year. And therefore:
4) IT quality gates were cut. IT objected to such a fast delivery, but was overruled. Why? The business leaders’ objective was to deliver the application by the end of the year to demonstrate its value to stakeholders. IT knew about the risks of cutting the quality gates, but failed to manage the expectations of the business stakeholders. And therefore:
5) IT and the business leaders had conflicting priorities. Why? The business leaders’ priority was speed, for which they were willing to sacrifice quality. They failed to realise the potential consequences that system malfunctions might have. IT, in turn, did not manage business leaders’ expectations properly.In the end, organisation stakeholders forgot about the source of the issue, accusing IT of incompetence. IT, on the other hand, charged their business counterparts with having unreasonable expectations and putting undue pressure on them. The blame game has begun.