Supun Wathukarage 101531213

 Assignment A
 INF30029
 Due 5th April 2019
 Assignment Value 20%
 Name: Supun Wathukarage
 Student ID: 101531213

The Queensland new payroll system fiasco

I hold a copy of this assignment that can be produced if the original is

lost/damaged. To the best of my belief, no part of this assignment has been
copied from any other student’s work or from any other source except where
due acknowledgement is made in the text. No part has been written for me/us
by any other person, except where such collaboration has been authorised by
the lecturer concerned.

Signature and date. Supun wathukarage 16/03/2019

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Executive summary

This report provides analysis and evaluation of Queensland new payroll system fiasco who wanted to
implement a new payroll system and signed a contract with IBM. However, this project was a disaster
for QHS and developer IBM, therefore this report evaluates and analyze the failure of this project using
triple constraints, how did this problem effected customer and what will be the effect IBM brand name
as they are bigger firm. Also the report provides a recommendation how this problem could be avoided
or make changes in order to succeed.

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Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................4
What’s triple constraints and the impact of the business?.........................................................................5
Project scope...............................................................................................................................................5
Cost..........................................................................................................................................................5
Time.........................................................................................................................................................6
Quality.....................................................................................................................................................7
Meeting requirements and specification.....................................................................................................7
Brand name recognition..............................................................................................................................7
Recommendation........................................................................................................................................7
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................7
Reference....................................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
Every project is started with a “successful” plan which is either paper based or a 3D sketch. But just
having a better sketch does not guarantee the project will go seamlessly along with the plan when it
comes to real like situations. If the constructions were done automated machines the project managers
will be able to finish the project on time without having to deal with issues of the employees. The
number of employees depend what the project is. When the project is put to real life performance there
will be situation of employees not agreeing to ideas of one another. This is because if thousand
employees are employed there will be thousand different ideas which can results in conflicts and in the
long run it will affect the project. When working on a prolonged project unity and respecting each
other’s ideas is very important.

The Queensland health system sector has over 65000 employees which provides public healthcare
services to Australia’s Queensland province. The sector has got 16 health and hospital departments. QHS
was considering for a replacement for their payroll system which was soon to be outdated. In 2007 QHS
contracted IBM Australia which is an entry point to nosiness solutions, security and storage solutions to
apply a new system at a budget of AU $6.9M which was deliverable in July 2008.

It was an immense and a complex project which involved the management of over 24,000 divergent
combinations of withholdings and salary payment for more than 80,000 employees, contractors, and
industrial agreements. At this condition IBM agreed to develop and implement an “interim solution” in
seven months. The lack of detectible objectives was an important cause of the project’s abject bungling

So many of employees start work at companies having high expectations about their pay. They spent
almost 8 to 9 hours from their lives every day. Due to this reason all the workers should receive an
accurate salary. This project is revolving to help employees, who has faced injustice throughout their
carrier.

What’s triple constraints and the impact of the business?

Triple constrains can be treated as a boundary for a project to work on. Scope, time and cost are the
three constraints which provides a framework that every team member in a project can agree on. This
helps to carry out the project forward while making changes if required. This model helps managers to
decide what trade off will work and what impact will the project have. This makes sure they can identify
issues and adjust the triple constraint to avoid issues from developing into problems.

Project scope
Project scope contains project goals, deliverables, tasks, costs and deadlines to make plaining for the
future success of the project. project scope can cause both success and failure to a project. Mostly once
a project has been started client might need more requirements or add changes, while project is

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ongoing. This changes the initial estimated cost when more components are added as per client’s
request. As cost, time, deadlines and requirement will be changed according to the client’s changes.

Since the start of the project QHS has had a poor project scope, as it shows they have only taken two
weeks to scope out project requirements before beginning the project. confirming the scope out to a
larger project firm like QHS payroll system which handles data of thousands and thousands of
employees, the amount of time spent of building the scope has to be done wisely. In this project the
scope has been confirmed within two weeks. This shows an imbalance of project goals, costs, time and
quality. “At the Mater Hospital, a similar project took six months to scope” (Palmer 2013). A hospital
project is a smaller project compared to the Queensland payroll system. But the hospital project took six
months to scope according to Palmer’s article whereas the payroll project took only two weeks. The
factors which affected the failure of this project can be further proved by looking at QHS’s estimated
time, cost and quality.

Cost
The cost of a project can define as any expenditures that are already been made or estimated to be
made. Setting up a cost is important for a project like QHS payroll system it sets margin for the expected
cost. This make sure project is on budget.

In the image above (beyondsoftware, 2018) shown the compression between expected cost and actual
cost that has occurred through out the project. when the project finally went alive cost was standing on
$1.1 Million but the system wasn’t functioning accordingly. Therefore, to achieve a fully operational
system by upcoming years company has estimated an another $836 million on the top of $1.1 million,
which took the final price up 1.2 million. The main reason of the increment of the cost was lack of team
leadership caused minimalist planning and testing during the development process. This resulted having
over 35,000 wrong payments to QHS employees. This scenario is resulted due to poor attention towards
the scope. In a project as such higher consideration must be given when the budget is estimated.
Because along the years various factors comes into account such as adding different components as the
OHS request such as changes to the system. This alters the initial estimated budget. Due to this reason,
every time the project fails, they kept proposing new budgets.

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Time
Westland (2018) explains that time in a project is the estimated time allocated to finish the project.
Time is estimated by analyzing the tasks which are to be completed and allocate time to each and every
task.

The image above shows the project timeline starting from 2007 until 2010. At the end of 207, IBM
officially signed the contract with the QHS payroll system. Initially the project was estimated to finish by
August 2008. Due to the additional planning IBM decided to complete solution of project in 2010.
According to the image above the project has gone live a few times but the number of times in which
the project failed has outweighed the number of times it went live. In 2010 as well the project has gone
live with a new estimated budget, but the system caused malfunction. This could be due to the lack of
spent such as a period of two weeks to design the scope.

Quality
Quality of a project is the standard of the processes and actions which is needed to determine and
achieve the final result as per clients needs. Quality includes accuracy and detailing of the project. the
attention of the client towards the project depends on quality. If the quality is not up to the client’s
standards there is a higher probability for the estimated budget to change until its up to the client’s
level.

The QHS payroll project showed a low quality standard due to facing failure a number of times. A system
such as the payroll system has to be of maximum accuracy as it deals with the hard work of the
employees and their lives. Their lives depend on this pay and if that is not done properly at the
expected standard the companies will have to face bankruptcy. When the project went alive there has
been employees who has faced over payments, under payments and sometimes no payment at all. This
puts both the client and the project developers at stake.

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Meeting requirements and specification

Today most of the projects targets customers’ requirements and specification before implementing a
project. In order to do this developer go through many surveys, prototypes and opinions from the
professionals. However, QHS project didn’t have a positive impact towards the customers as they were
unable to meet the requirements and specification. Since the project began, they have had less contact
with customers, this is proved in the scope as they have taken only two weeks to gain information and
to finalize the scope. For a bigger firm time spent on designing the scope has to be done wisely by
looking at every aspect if not it the final result will be a failure like the QHS payroll system where
customers were left with faulty product and a faulty result.

Brand name recognition

Brand name leads to more revenue or drop of sales from brand recognition by customer. Consumers
believe in well-known products rather than least known products. IBM is a well-known company
throughout the world, so their brand is easily identified by every consumer. However, when such a
company fails to complete a project for a firm like QHS, it will cause losing their brand name recognition
from customers.

They have failed multiple attempts yet couldn’t come up with a proper system, so the QHS has lost their
faith with their brand and wouldn’t want to continue the agreement with them.

Recommendation
Throughout the whole project it has been seen that time management, technical issues and the inability
to consider the needs of the customer which leads to poor communication skills. When it comes to a
project as the QHS payroll system more time has to be spent on designing the scope wisely because that
is the main foundation of a project. Also when it deals with customers more attention has to be given to
them as well so their needs will be accomplished by the end of the project. another issue related to this
project is testing and planning issues. If the testing skills of this software program was better before
executing it to the firm, they could have at least minimized the amount of money spent constantly every
time it fails.

Conclusion

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Reference
Chris, P 2013, Project management lessons from the QLD Health payroll inquiry, itnews, viewed 24
March 2019,
<https://www.itnews.com.au/news/project-management-lessons-from-the-qld-health-payroll-inquiry-
343789>

Jason, W 2018, The Triple Constraint in Project Management: Time, Scope & Cost, Project Management, viewed 24
March 2019,
<https://www.projectmanager.com/blog/triple-constraint-project-management-time-scope-cost >

Beyond software 2017, The Queensland Health Payroll Fiasco, Beyond software, viewed 27 March 2019,
<https://blog.beyondsoftware.com/the-queensland-health-payroll-fiasco>

Richard N, C 2013, Queensland Health Payroll System Commission Of Inquiry, Audax At Fidelis,
Queensland ,<http://www.healthpayrollinquiry.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0014/207203/Queensland-Health-
Payroll-System-Commission-of-Inquiry-Report-31-July-2013.pdf>