It is unusual for there to be a single reason behind the failure of a proposed Information System. Some of the major reasons for the failures are as follows for each system. London Ambulance Service Resulting the examination of the system, which was created for the London Ambulance Service, I have identified a considerable amount of causes, which would have contributed to the failure of the system. The forecast planning was totally unrealistic and the deadline set was impossible to work to.
Due to the lack of time the system only received partial implementation and this proved to produce many operating problems. Examples of these would be screen lock ups, server failures, which would be crucial, loss of printer buffer memory, which would account in the system falling to pieces. Not only was the deadline unrealistic, the suppliers were also inexperienced. They were only a small software house and had not been over experienced in large project.
Alternatively an experienced house would have probably identified the dangers of setting such a tight deadline and declined the project. The development process of the system was inadequately tested. Individual parts of the system were thoroughly tested but the overall system and hardware weren’t tested as a whole. The back up server was required if the system crashed. This wasn’t tested and the consequences, which occurred when the system failed, were that the back up didn’t even work so this shows how they tested the system.
The testing process didn’t test to the extent that it would if the system was in practice for example if there were overflows of data or if data was incomplete this would be the cause of some of the failures in the system. This is the reason that the system couldn’t cope with the overflows of communication between the system and the ambulances because it was never tested for the actual type of data required. The first day ever-realistic test was the first day of the launch of the system.
The overall quality of the training provided was not of a consistent level and was made very difficult, due to the fact that the system itself was constantly changing as modifications were being made. The staff was given minimal input into how the system would run so they felt left out and not valued. The overall training was delayed due to the implementation stage not being complete hence at the end of the day not enough training was given to make the staff fell confident with the system.