Foremostco Computer System Switchover Case Study: A Disaster
Foremostco Case Study “What should Foremostco do now!”
From the case, we know that Foremostco use only one year to rashly finish a new computer system for their logistics and even there are several bugs exists, they still decide to forge ahead with the switchover. The result turned to be a disaster. The computer system, newly designed to handle all the logistics of the business, was not doing what it was supposed to do. Due to the buggy system, almost all the important documents were printing out blank or not matched customer’ orders. So a great number of customers felt angry since they did not receive their orders or they were not even billed at all. Also since the new language is hard to learn, the staff was further frustrated and Foremostco lost several key employees. Foremostco also lost a great amount of money to develop this useless and buggy computer system.
Now I’ll discuss the events that led to current situation and analysis what could have been done to avoid the current crisis and what would Foremostco going to do in the future to compensate.
The decision to do the development in-house
The first decision was that when they agreed to build their own application software from scratch. Basically, I don’t think this is a wise decision. Actually there was a better choice for them at the beginning that is to use off the shell program. This is a cheaper way compared to in house development and also save a lot of time and efforts. Also they found out that there is no suitable off the shell program for them to perform tasks they required, but they should not banish this option only by intuition. On one hand, they didn’t have strong evidence to prove that the in house development would success in the end; on the other hand, they could considering changing their old business logics and find a matching point with their requirement and the off the shelf program. Foremoscto have been processing their data on the old system and their data
From the case, we know that Foremostco use only one year to rashly finish a new computer system for their logistics and even there are several bugs exists, they still decide to forge ahead with the switchover. The result turned to be a disaster. The computer system, newly designed to handle all the logistics of the business, was not doing what it was supposed to do. Due to the buggy system, almost all the important documents were printing out blank or not matched customer’ orders. So a great number of customers felt angry since they did not receive their orders or they were not even billed at all. Also since the new language is hard to learn, the staff was further frustrated and Foremostco lost several key employees. Foremostco also lost a great amount of money to develop this useless and buggy computer system.
Now I’ll discuss the events that led to current situation and analysis what could have been done to avoid the current crisis and what would Foremostco going to do in the future to compensate.
The decision to do the development in-house
The first decision was that when they agreed to build their own application software from scratch. Basically, I don’t think this is a wise decision. Actually there was a better choice for them at the beginning that is to use off the shell program. This is a cheaper way compared to in house development and also save a lot of time and efforts. Also they found out that there is no suitable off the shell program for them to perform tasks they required, but they should not banish this option only by intuition. On one hand, they didn’t have strong evidence to prove that the in house development would success in the end; on the other hand, they could considering changing their old business logics and find a matching point with their requirement and the off the shelf program. Foremoscto have been processing their data on the old system and their data