(Adams Jones) One thing you need to look at in an information systems development project are the technical difficulties and/or risks. You can have the perfect solution for a problem, but it is going to be worthless if the solution isn’t technically feasible. Figuring out these difficulties and risks should be one of the priorities early in the process.
The two biggest potential consequences of not assessing the technical risks associated with an information systems development project are blowing time constraints and resource overrun (Valachich et al, 2014). Time constraints can be strictly defined as a latest expected completion time or loosely defined by describing it “as soon as possible”. However, pushing the time to completion because of a technical difficulty can move every other aspect of a project to the right. Getting all of the stakeholders together to ensure the milestones have realistic timelines can help mitigate this risk.
Resource overrun is when something unexpected happens that results in a change in the project and causes the actual cost to start to exceed the initial budget. In the case of an information systems development project, the resource could be money or could be technology. If there was a lazy analyst who only performed the minimal amount of research, they might have missed the small detail that a packaged software product would not run as part of a hybrid solution on your operating system. If you had already purchased the product, you may be out of luck and just need to purchase something else to salvage the effort. This type of overrun could have been easily avoided with more effort and will infuriate management. If the difficulty of the project was underestimated, the developers may not have been allotted enough time to complete their work which would mean you have to continue paying them until they finish what they are working on. Incorporating your development team in the planning will help you prevent something like this happening.
Reference:
Valacich, J. S., George, J. F., & Hoffer, J. A. (2015). Essentials of Systems Analysis and Design. Pearson Education Limited.
