BUSN 6061- Strategic Management Information Systems

Assignment #2 – Harvest City

By:

Kresimir Bebic - T00563469

Felecia Wallace - T00629167

The Harvest City Convention Center was undergoing a major project that started in 2009 when

city council members voted and approved the building of a convention center to attract business

travellers, as well , as well as provide the local community with a prestigious place for

gatherings. In order for this project to be successful, the mayor of Harvest City, Andrew

Thompson, implemented a task force which was later founded as the Harvest City Convention

Complex Corporation. They were tasked with finalizing the scope and cost of the proposed

complex, working with primary stakeholders to identify the revenue and financing required to

bring the project to fruition, and the exclusively manage, market, and operate the new facility

(Applegate and Montealegre, 2018). When the newly formed corporation hired John Casper as

their CEO, the project looked promising as they began to look at convention centers worldwide

that had state of the art intelligent procurement systems that helped in aggregating information

from social media, entertainment, and a wide variety of other information sources that could then

be integrated with internal booking, property management and other hotel, convention center,

and a shopping center systems (Applegate and Montealegre, 2018). John Casper was able to

persuade Venso’s CEO Bill Miller, to take on the $26 million contract to develop the best-in-

class and IoT-based procurement system to facilitate the procurement of direct and indirect items

for all tenants (Applegate and Montealegre, 2018). Unfortunately, due to illness, John Casper

resigned as CEO of the Harvest City Convention Complex Corporation and instead of hiring a

new CEO, city mayor Thompson divided the responsibilities among other executives. This is

where the failure begins. Here, we’ll take a closer look at the underlying reasons why the project

was a failure, why Venso was assessed a $1.25 million bill for the cost of implementing an

alternative procurement system and slapped with a $5,000 per day penalty for the original IT

system’s failure. We will also look at who was most at fault in this project.
The key factors that contributed to the project’s failure

In order to ensure a successful choice of building procurement system the client's brief must be

clear and comprehensive and contain not only the aesthetic and technical criteria for the project,

but of equal importance, the primary and secondary objectives in terms of functionality/quality,

time and cost (N.E.D.O., 1975). One, or maybe two will need to be sacrificed to some extent and

individual clients will need to weight each of the criteria to suit their own organisation's

particular circumstances and the project's technical, commercial and other characteristics

(Walker, 1989).

Communication was one of the main contributors to the failure of this project from the

beginning. As the CEO at the time, Casper was not initially aware that Venso had been

contracted for the development of the procurement system. Until then, it was assumed that each

Harvest City tenant would develop its own procurement system (Applegate and Montealegre,

2018). This example is also an indication of poor stakeholder management (Snyder, 2013 pg. 20-

23).

While communication failures in projects are caused by many factors, the project team

ultimately bears the burden for ensuring successful communication with a project (Cervone,

2014). When Casper ceased to be CEO, the new executive team failed at understanding the

importance of the procurement system to the convention center and refused to communicate with

Bill Miller and the Venso team, ultimately creating a disordered environment which caused

confusion and misunderstanding among the project team.

The differing approaches to the project was another contributing factor to the failure. Both

Casper and Miller entered the contract with an integral system approach, while the new

executive team, made up of many members mayor Andrew Thompson delegated, viewed it as a

modular project (Burgan & Burgan, 2014). When this happened, the prioritizing of

communication with Venso declined and lead to Miller negotiating with subcontractors on the

project, ultimately slowing down the implementation of the procurement system.

Finally, the planning team’s failure to identify business needs of the tenants slowed down the

entire project, and eventually had to demolish and rebuild some interior spaces in the complex to

incorporate alterations to the procurement system (Applegate and Montealegre, 2018). Without

one individual overseeing the entirety of the project, the additions and removals of previously

agreed upon specifics of the project lead to the altering of the project scope and budget.

Who do you feel is most at fault?

In the case of the Harvest City Convention Center procurement system, there are many people at

fault. In the end, I believe that the brunt of the responsibilities for the failure of this project

belong to the mayor, Andrew Thompson, and the Harvest City Corporation. Reasons for this

belief are discussed below, but before, we must acknowledge the faults of all parties.

Venso CEO Bill Miller should be held accountable as, in the end, his team were not able to

produce what the contract had asked of them. Although OnCloud’s report suggested that the

system had the capability of living up to the performance, it would be delayed for 6-12 months,

ultimately not having the project done in a timely manner.

John Casper, although only on the project for a few years before having to retire, should also

have some fault in the failure of the project as he was unable to identify the need of the

procurement system before construction had begun on the convention center.

When it comes to mayor Andrew Thompson and the Harvest City Corporation, I believe they are

most at fault for the failure of a project. As the leaders of the project once John Casper resigned,

the miscommunication and failure to acknowledge the concerns/complaints Bill Miller and

Venso employees brought forward caused major roadblocks with the implementation. The

experience of the project manager directly influences the success of projects. By not hiring a new

CEO, but delegating Casper’s tasks to other executives, Thompson effectively lost control of the

project. Harvest City Corporation ignored the complaints by the Venso team and ended up

employing a vendor to configure sensors in the convention center without informing Venso. One

of the major causes for the false fire alarm happened because the corporation had allowed the

vendor to tap into the sensors for its fire emergency alert system without Venso’s knowledge or

approval.

The sequence of problems that occur during the implementation process of the intelligent

procurement system.

Firstly, during the planning of a project the Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK)

recommends the proper planning of procurement and communications at early stages of project.

(Snyder, 2013 pg. 6). Poor communications management existed from the beginning.
Next, after learning of Venso’s involvement with the project and the initial design for the

complex to have the Harvest City tenants develop their own procurement system, Casper

believed it would be better to have a central procurement system for the entire complex. The

design and requirement of this new system was initially declined by Venso because the

technology of involved in the project should have been incorporated into construction from the

very beginning (Applegate and Montealegre, 2018). This was a concern of Miller’s and one of

the project consultants, but Venso and Casper decided to proceed, nonetheless. This was the

second major error made by the persons involved in the project.

This contract that was negotiated with Venso was done before a proper analysis of the

requirements and needs of the Harvest City tenants were established. This again is an example of

poor stakeholder management. The design of the procurement system agreed upon by Casper and

Miller would later be inadequate for all the tenants and changes would have to be made.

After the signing of the new contract Casper resigned as CEO due to illness and was never

replaced. Instead, his responsibilities were divided and taken over by other managers. This

resulted in the virtual carte blanche the Venso being almost null and void and they faced

challenges gaining basic access and had to negotiate with subcontractors for this right. The

mangers in charge of the procurement project did not seem to understand the complexity of what

was required to design and implement the procurement system (Applegate and Montealegre,

2018, pg. 6).

Finally, the emergency fire alarm system was incorporated in Venso’s procurement system to use

its sensors without any notification or approval from Venso. This led to the sprinkler incident

that took place at Harvest City’s first event.

What could have been done at different stages of the implementation to prevent the problems?

What could have been done differently to respond once a problem occurred?

Proper identification and establishment of definitive project goals and gaining a consensus on the

importance of specific goals is deemed as very important features that increase the likelihood of

success for large projects (Baker, 1991) Additionally, Baker (1991) states that effective project

planning and coordination among key stakeholders are also factors that have huge impact on the

success of a project. These factors were missing from the initial stages of the Harvest City

project. Had this been done then the technology and structure required for the Venso project

would have been incorporated form the start of construction and certain changes that were

required throughout the project may have been avoided.

According to Komal et al. (2019) Scope Creep is defined as “the variation or growth of project

scope or pressure to deliver more than what was approved” and is the main cause of failure for

80% of software projects. This project has been susceptible and influenced by scope creep from

the early stages of the project. This is evident with the expansion of the Venso contract from a 5

million-dollar project with the understanding that each Harvest City tenant would build their own

procurement system to a 26 million-dollar contract to create an integrated procurement system

for the entire complex (Applegate and Montealegre, 2018).

The modifications that were made to the original design of the project after the contract was

signed can be seen as scope creep as well, since they added to the initial budget ($400,000 for a

change for a vendor done in Mar. 2016) and also the projected timeline as mentioned by

OnCloud in their analysis (Applegate and Montealegre, 2018). These modifications would have
affected the overall quality of the projected as shown by Thakurta, (2013), who concludes that

project quality and effectiveness of a software project is not only affected by the changes made

during the progression of the project but also how these changes are implemented.

Miller should have taken the initiative early on to address the requests for changes by vendors

and Harvest City for changes to the original design and have amendments made to the original

contract to reflect how this would affect the deadline.

Perhaps a lot of the confusion and “chaos” as mentioned by Miller, (Applegate and Montealegre,

2018) could have been avoided if after the resignation of Casper as CEO someone else was

appointed to replace him. CEOs provide leadership, direction, and experience. They give a

broader perspective on the matters affecting a company and link the outside to the inside (Lafley

& Martin, 2015). They see the bigger picture and move the company in that direction to achieve

its goals without overextending, overreaching, and forgetting ‘what business they are in”. (Lafley

& Martin, 2015). Without Casper there was no one to spearhead and drive the project in the

direction it was supposed to go. Casper also had over 20 years experience in managing

complexes (Applegate and Montealegre, 2018), when he left, he brought all that experience with

him. According to Al-Hajj (2018) the success of a project is greatly influenced by the experience

of the project manager and those involved.

Finally, the addition of the emergency fire response to Venso’s systems should have been

discussed with them directly and a collaborative strategy outlined on how to proceed. As the

creators of the software they would have a better understanding of its limitations and capabilities

and would therefore be able to provide some suggestion on whether the incorporation could and

should be done. Omitting them from this decision resulted in an unsuccessful first event which

may have been preventable.

Venso CEO’s Response

Considering all the changes that were made to the original design of the system and the

OnCloud’s report, Miller should prepare a counter suit against Harvest City. On Cloud’s report

suggested that in theory Venso’s system could live up to what was promised in the contract. The

report also mentioned that the delay to of 6-12 months to rectify stability and reliability issue

may have been influenced by conflicting requirements that were added to the system by Harvest

City.

The complexity of the system required months for the software to stabilise, but Harvest City was

at least partially responsible for this complexity (Applegate and Montealegre, 2018), and

therefore to an extent inadvertently responsible for the delay as well.

Venso could also argue that the emergency fire alert system was implemented without their

knowledge and consent and that the result of their software system being tampered with had

unforeseen consequences such as the sprinkler incident.

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