Q.2 Provide examples of events that you think may trigger alterations in a work plan. What would the consequences of such events be?
Initial assumptions that have failed to be met can cause major alterations in a project work plan. A work plan is vital to the success of an ERP implementation, it plans for stages, dates, hours of labour and foreseeable problems. Even with a detailed work plan, particular events may not go to plan which can set the whole project back. Events such as;
- Defective equipment
- Unexpected system performance, requiring additional hardware and space
- Certain key staff members falls sick or become unavailable
- Testing raised certain problems with future business processes
- Testing takes longer then anticipated due to bugs or programming errors
These examples would all trigger alternations and perhaps even a review of the whole work plan. Which consumes more time, resources and money. Management is never impressed by this, as it places more pressure on the project and on management. There is great dependencies on the fulfilment of these tasks, hence careful preparation is needed when preparing the work plan. However sometimes, there is just no way of anticipating such occurrences, consequently many work plans are altered.
References
Sumner, M 2005, Enterprise Resource Planning, Pearson Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.
