PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Project Management

Project Management

The UK agency was already facing a number of problems before they decided to go for the new system. They were already facing a problem of forecasting and thee monthly forecasts were usually not up to the mark. Every other year they were facing a shortage of employees, due to poor forecasting.

When the project started, there were no steps taken by the UK passport agency to make sure that there will be hiccups in the process. The agreement was made with the Siemens for the development of a new IT system for UK passport system. There was no such study made beforehand study the loopholes in the old system, the old system was not studied before going for the new system. Logically, the old system should have been studied before they had gone for a new system, the faults of the old system should have been studied and then the new system requirements should have been developed after consultation with the stakeholder of the project. The UK passport office did not make any consultation with the end users of the new system; therefore, the new system could not help them to improve and instead resulted in complete chaos.

Whenever a new system is being applied at an organization it is necessary to train the end users of the new system. It is exceedingly difficult for a human being to adopt change and especially, if a person is working on a thing for a long period and has become quite accustomed of the old system then it is necessary to train them for an appropriate period. It must be made sure that they learn the new system in depth and understand each aspect of the new system, which will affect their work. These employees should be passed through a comprehensive training course, and after the training course, it should be made sure that they have leant all the necessary things about the new system by taking some tests. In this case, the employees had to shift from clerical handwork to using the IT to do their work, all the IT systems were new for them and that is why it took a lot of time for them to understand the new system, and this created the problem. The employees were not used to using the computer systems for doing their work, and they were taking a lot of time to do their normal work, which resulted in delays for the customers. There was no such contingency planning on the part of the UK passport system management. The contingency plans they had developed were based on poor forecasting, there forecasting had proved to be inefficient even before. The yearly forecasts made by the UK passport agency were quite reasonable, but the monthly forecasts were not up to the mark and had created problems for them before, as well. No importance was given to these things, the contingency plans were developed keeping in view the faulty forecasts, and the fact ...