Lavasoft Company is developing new website software for one of its corporate clients. The proj- ect starts out when a few Lavasoft staffers meet with the client to document a list of user needs and requirements. When they finish, they turn the list over to the Lavasoft design team.

The project manager, Lakshmi Singh, feels that the kind of system best suited to the user's needs is more or less obvious, and she creates some bullet points and flowcharts to address them. She then presents these to the design team and asks if anyone has questions. Some people are concerned that the approach as stated by the bul- lets and charts is too vague, but Lakshmi assures them that the vagueness will subside as details of the system are defined. To speed up decision-making and reduce outside interference, the team works in relative isolation from other development teams in the company.

Daily, the team is forced to interpret the bullet points and high-level charts and to make design decisions. Whenever there is disagreement about interpretation, Lakshmi makes the decision. The team creates a list of detailed system specifications, and the project is considered on schedule. Upon working to the specifications, however, issues arise concerning the system's compatibil- ity with the client's existing site. Further, some of the specifications call for technical expertise that the team lacks. The design team goes back to the original user needs and discovers that some of the specifications are unrelated to the needs, and for some of the needs there are no specifications.

The team drops some of the specifications and adds new ones. This requires eliminating some of the existing code, writing new code, and retesting the system, which puts the project behind sched- ule. Resistance grows to changing the specifica- tions further, since that would require even more recoding and delay the project further.

Lakshmi adds people to the project to get it back on sched- ule. Eventually the system is ready for installation, although it is 2 months late. Because more people were needed to staff the project, Lavasoft does not make a profit. Because the specifications were incorrect, the system is not fully compatible with the client's website and Lavasoft must continue to work on it and introduce "fixes."

QUESTIONS

1. What went wrong with the project?

2. Where mistakes were made in the project initially?

3. How were problems allowed to persist and go uncorrected for so long?