Failure in Implementation: A Case Study

Failure in Implementation: A Case Study Raija Halonen, University of Oulu, Department of Information Processing Science, P.O.Box 3000, FIN-90014 OULUN YLIOPISTO, Finland, fax +358-8-5531890, [email protected]

Abstract This article describes a case study concerning an implementation of an information system. The implementation in this paper includes designing, developing, and taking the developed system into use. Also training included in the implementation project. The implementation of the information system was carried out in the middle of 1990’s. The target organization comes from manufacturing branch where the main task of the factory was to make cable for telecommunications sector and industry. The target information system became topic when the environmental factors were changing and more information about the preparation of the cable and its coating was needed especially for quality purposes. The author was asked to design and implement the information system and to arrange the training for the users. Because the factory environment was not familiar to the designer she needed a lot of help from the workers who were experienced in coating the cable. The data of the study consisted of material that was collected by interviews and observations made by the author during the implementation project. The implementation project lasted six months. The implementation encountered a lot of user resistance and the coating information system was not taken into proper use after this implementation project. Introduction This paper is a case study about an implementation project which was carried out in the middle of 1990’s. It describes the effects of the users and especially the effects of the user resistance on the success of an implementation. The material of the case is collected by interviews and observations made by the author. This implementation project consisted of system design, implementation, and user training. The environment was totally unfamiliar to the designer and she needed a lot of expert knowledge from the workers during the whole implementation project. The users were middle-aged factory workers who didn’t have previous experiences about microcomputers or Windows user interface. User involvement in information system development is a contributor to successful implementation (Newman 1990). The users should provide expertise in generation of the solution, not only that they will provide data and information input to the expert’s creative process (Cairns 1999). User training is one of the base elements in the whole

implementation (Bikson 1985). User training and time that is needed to get used to the new system is often forgotten. The lapse of memory comes often from the financial resources of the implementation coming to their end and on the other hand from the thing that in the very beginning of the project there is no idea about the training costs. According to Davis (1985) the user training is a critical task in an implementation and very much related to the change resistance against the new information system. The amount of the training is also dependent on the thing how much the new information system affects on the different tasks in the organization. The change resistance became evident already in the design phase and there were big troubles to get over it. The legacy information system was practically A4-sheets on the tables and in the files and they were re-written in case the facts on the sheets were modified. The workers didn’t find it important to get a new information system to replace the A4-sheets. The design phase was concluded with the help of the users after the supervision level had had some discussions with the foremen of the workers. In the testing phase the resistance was so huge that some of the workers refused to test the system. There were problems to use the mouse with one hand, problems to use the software and problems to understand the terms used in the information system. The sad conclusion of the implementation project was that the information system was not taken into use despite of the user training and user involvement because of the resistance of the workers. The implementation project can be seen as consultant-driven (Cairns 1999) with the expert knowledge coming from the workers in the factory. However, the users could participate in the design and testing phases and they were able to get all the training they needed during that implementation project.

Background of the case The target organization is a designer and a manufacturer of cables that are supplied to the global telecommunications sector and industry. In the organization there is a department where the cables are coated. The coating is executed with noisy, big cable covering machines in the industrial hall. There are several machines serving different cable lines like copper cable, optical cable, cellular cable and data cable line in the hall. The coating is partly unclean and noisy stage and there are pauses in the work when the users used to have a smoke or a cup of coffee while waiting for the cable to be coated or waiting for the coating to be finished. If there were problems in the cable covering machine, a red lamp was lighted, a siren howled, and the worker went to adjust the cable, to add coating material or to insert new parameters into the machine. The coating as a work phase needed also strength from workers because the cable reels had to be changed when they were empty or full. The coating phase could last several hours so that the shift was changed during it. Some coating phase was shorter, some longer than the others. The coating information was changed between workers during the concurrent shift hour and so the next shift knew what was done by the coating before they came to work.

The customers of the factory ordered cables according to their needs. Sometimes they ordered exactly the same type of cable, sometimes the ordered cable varied by thickness or material from the before-hand ordered type. The interval between orders of the same customer could vary from weeks till months or years. There were a limited number of customers around the world and the workers used to know which kind of cable was meant to a specific customer. All the needed information was written on papers which were kept in paper files on shelves and tables. When the certain cable type was changed the information on the paper concerning that cable type was wiped out and coating parameters were re-written with a thicker pencil. Sometimes there was written some extra information about the certain coating time. The information was almost impossible to retrieve when needed, but the workers didn’t see any need for a new information system. They were used to the messy A4-sheets and they knew how to coat cable. The workers were middle-aged factory workers who didn’t have previous experiences about microcomputers or Windows user interface. Some of them had a microcomputer at home, but it was mainly used by the children and for playing purposes only. The education level among the users was quite low, mostly vocational training or comprehensive school. The coating was a task that could be learned only by doing. The need for the new information system became topic when some customers started to ask for quality reports and information about the cable manufacturing. There were changes in the organization and a new manager found it important to have knowledge also about the coating process. The knowledge meant all the parameters and materials to be known that had been used in one coating time. Quality was to be seen also in the industrial hall and more tidiness was demanded also among cable cover machines. Research method Case study as a research method suits in this study because this is a question of a unique case in the target department of the organization. The research question to be answered was: How do factory workers adopt a Windows based information system? The author participated in collecting the material for the study by doing interviews among the workers and their foremen in the factory and interviewing the representatives of manager level. During the implementation project the author made also observations concerning the progress of the implementation. When the first signs of resistance against the new information system came evident, there were some plans made to manage the resistance. Actions against resistance were carried out and reflections were registered to be used afterwards during the study. The collected data was evaluated and analyzed and conclusions were drawn from the analysis. Users and resistance Users need reasons to use new applications. Keefe (2003) writes about the importance to focus on the user, who must not be forgotten in any phases of the system development. Systems that improve business processes and deliver information faster to workers are not enough – the users using the new application must be motivated to do the tasks that

are needed to get the information available. Without motivated users there is no traction to get the implementation project succeed, Keefe thinks. The implementation can be supported by recognizing the type of the resistance. Markus (1983) finds out three kinds of resistance to change according to the most important factor in the resistance. According to Markus it is important to know, what kind of resistance is in question, because the means depend on the type of the resistance. If the resistance depends on the people, the users must be trained, they must be persuaded or they must be taken into the implementation as members of the project. If the resistance to change depends mostly on the system, the system must be developed by helping the usability, adjusting the system with the organization and increasing the user role in the system design process. According to the third alternative the resistance to change can arise from the interaction between organization and system, and the problems in the organization should be amended before the implementation phase. According to the political aspect the changes in power-sharing and from the socio-technical point of view the changes in distribution of work might be the solutions when eliminating the resistance to change that arises from the third alternative. Markus reminds about familiar comments regarding user resistance: 1. management support and user involvement in the design process reduce user resistance 2. technically good systems are less resisted than others 3. users resist “not user friendly” systems 4. if there is nothing wrong, users resist change 5. benefits should exceed costs. Users working in an organization adopt the culture that dominates in that organization (Ayas 2001). It is worth asking, if there is space for learning capabilities within an organization. Newman (1990) refers to learning models to be used where user involvement is seen as an opportunity for designers to educate and inform users about the system. The resistance decreased and the expectations of the system became more realistic. Learning was seen as an important element in user involvement. Learning is possible both on designer’s and user’s sides and it could reduce the semantic gap between these parts. Users differ according to their capabilities in involving in the system design. Engler (1996) gives a step-by-step approach when identifying the right user to represent all users in the implementation project: 1) identify the correct user, 2) involve the user early and often, 3) create and maintain a quality relationship, 4) make improvement easy. By these steps the designer should ensure that the user wants to progress the implementation, the feedback is continuous, commitment holds the system’s entire life cycle, and among other things, that the designer could learn the user’s language. Failure and success Failure or success of a project is often a perception that is influenced by people having different backgrounds and experiences, thinks Rad (2003). He suggests tools that would allow project members to evaluate their project. The tools differ according to the viewer: customer side values goals and objectives of the project, scope and quality aspects of the

deliverables of the project and cost and schedule attributes of the project. The vendor side values the managerial success regardless of the phase and incremental changes to scope, schedule, and cost. The primary focus in the vendor’s sense is the final deliverable of the project. DeLone (1992) introduced his information system success measure that has been used also to measure success of an implementation. The measure includes a model with six parts in it: system quality, information quality, use, user satisfaction, individual impact, and organizational impact. It seems that failure is more common in information technology projects than success (Furton 2003). Project failure rates exceed even 80 percent. The failure can derive from resistance, or the new system can differ too much from the assumptions and requirements made by the owner. Changes in project personnel and project objectives can be seen in the system development life cycle. The competence of the designer is difficult to evaluate. The incompetence can be found in unprofessional work, unqualified personnel and improper processes (Furton). Any information technology project has to overcome many risks, reminds Furton. The most influencing risk comes from the user’s or customer’s side like changes in priorities in the organization. Changing requirements is often seen in projects where users are involved and get more active when the project is progressing. The problem is visible in projects where the users can not say what they actually want (private notice). Griffith et al. (1999) offer a three-step process to aid success in implementation issues. The authors focus the problem in the invisibility that prevents the product manager to see relationships between implementation funding, support, and technology and thus makes it difficult to resource the implementation project. The first step is to reframe expectations. By this step the background for the implementation project will become clear. The second step is to create small wins. By this step there will be evidence of implementation success in small portions and the executive support will be ensured. It also helps the organization to understand that implementation is an ongoing, adaptive process that moves forward step by step. The third step is to reduce conflicts of interest. If the new technology must be embedded in the existing organizational setting, it can meet problems, because the existing organization was not planned to function with the new technology. According to Griffith end-users often resist implementation because the technology conflicts with their personal interests. User involvement in developing an information system has been known to be a critical component of the success in implementation project (Jiang 2002, Newman 1990). Jiang describes a study concerning interactions between the stakeholders in the project’s outcome. Studies tell us about the negative influences of a lack of user support, including resistance to change and unwilling involvement. As a result, various user-support risk controls have been tried to improve user involvement and participation. Prototyping and project ownership have been used to help designing when there has been problems with getting system requirements and user commitment. Implementation

The building of the coating information system was started by design and specification phases, where also the prospective users participated. Because the factory environment was not familiar to the designer she needed a lot of help from the workers who were experienced in coating cable. The designer visited several times in the industrial hall interviewing the workers and getting acquainted with the coating stage. The workers were very helpful and satisfied with the situation that somebody was so interested in what they were doing. The manager level introduced a couple of workers who would take part in the designing phase. The requirement specification was made together with the system specialist of the factory, one foreman, one worker, and the designer. In addition many needed features became evident while the designer followed the coating and the habits in the hall. At the beginning there were problems to understand all the phases that were needed in the coating. The workers chose some examples of the paper sheets that included the coating information. They were the base for the new information system. The papers were difficult to be read because some of them were already many years old, dirty A4-sheets. The designer needed a lot of help to understand the markings in the paper because they were made by handwriting and some of them on the sides of the paper. The coating was a dirty and noisy working phase and the men had their protective clothing on. Their hands were usually very dirty, though. Sometimes they had to use also earmuffs. The first prototype of the coating information system helped the users and the designer to understand each other. It was very difficult to understand the importance of the many phases in the coating and to understand all the parameters that had to be known to get the right type of cable. The prototype was shown in the designer’s workstation and the users were asked to deliver the impression and questions freely to the other users in the industrial hall. The prototype needed a lot of changes until the first pilot version was at hand. The need of the new information system was opened to question already in the very beginning of the building project. A new workstation was installed by the side of the cable coating machine. The keyboard was covered with a transparent plastic to keep it clean. The first pilot versions were ready to users in time. Before piloting some views from the new information system were showed to the key users who participated in the designing. These actions took place in the designer’s workplace. After these actions several discussions were held and more information and details to be checked were needed to get the application function properly. These discussions were fruitful also for the language problems, because there were situations where the designer and the workers could not understand each other fully. There were terms in coating that the designer could not understand and there were buttons and menus in the application that the workers could not understand. The designer trained the users two at a time because there was no place for more users. The training took place by the workstation by the cable coating machine and it was sometimes very noisy and there were a lot of disturbing factors. The pilot database

included fictitious parameters, customer names and cable types. The workers could not concentrate on the user interface and on the functionality of the application but they argued that there is no such cable type or no cable can be so thick. The designer could not make clear that she is not able to know all the right parameters in the certain cable type. In this phase there appeared a lot of strong resistance. The designer then tried to get the information right. The information system was Windows-based and the user interface needed the mouse to be used. The interface was quite unfamiliar to the workers and some of them had big troubles to use the mouse. This increased the difficulty degree so much, that a few workers refused to participate in to the piloting. The user interface looked as much as possible like the A4-sheet. The problem was that it was not possible to fit all the information needed on one screen. The user had to change page when inserting the information. According to the requirements the user interface included all the information which was before on separate A4-sheets. If there was specific information from a certain coating time, it had to be inserted into the system every time the information was current. Earlier it was already seen on the A4-sheet and the men had tacit knowledge about which coating time it concerned. There were many reasons for the resistance. The most important reason was that the computer as a tool was unfamiliar to the workers. Some of the workers had a computer at home, but it was mainly used only as a play machine for the children. One big jump forward came with the game Solitaire, which was installed into the coating line workstation to get the workers accustomed with the use of the mouse. So the workers could play solitaire in the meanwhile, when there were pauses in the coating. This was planned to help the men to learn to use the mouse and thus help the implementation project to succeed. Some of the men were very satisfied with the game and the resistance and fear of computers seemed to decrease a lot. There was seen also jealousy because these men were allowed to play during working time. Another reason for the resistance was the workers’ opinion about the need of the information system. They absolutely didn’t need the new system. They thought that it took their time and was useless because of there already was information about the coatings. They had difficulties to decide, who was to insert the information into the application, because there were many men working by the same cable coating machine and they were working together. When the coating progressed they had to insert more parameters in the machine and after that insert that same information into the application. The solitaire was removed once, because the foremen thought that it took too much time, but after new negotiations and more exact arguments the game was installed back to use. Also workers from other cable lines came to play with the workstation and it was not supported by their foremen. After piloting phase the application had had some minor enhancements according to the wishes of the users. The application was then installed to the workstation and more workers were trained to use the interface and the application. There were main users in

every shift and they trained the other workers to use the application. The designer was available during office hours and visited every now and then in the industrial hall to see how the application was used and to find out if there were any problems in the functioning of the solution. It happened that many times the application was not in use but the workers used the old paper sheets. After reminding the workers normally started to insert the coating information into the database, but several times they left the task to the next shift to be done. According to wishes all the old data from the unofficial coating information register in the paper files were written into the new information system via the system user interface. The designer used some time to insert the data, but most of the data was inserted by a student during his summer holiday. Part of the information was so messy and inaccurate, that it could not be inserted into the database. It meant that the workers had to insert all information including tens of parameters into the information system and that seemed to be time-consuming and difficult. The cable types had complicated names and when automated they had to be written right in order to be found next time. The implementation project lasted six months from the specification phase until the user training phase after installation. The industrial hall was cleaned and much cleaner than several months ago. This was part of the quality in the coating phase. The use of the final version of the information system didn’t last long before it was left out of use gradually, cable by cable and shift by shift. At that time the designer didn’t any more work in the organization. The information system was taken slowly into use again with new workers and when later implemented new features had been added into the system. The features of the information system had then been modified and added to meet the changes in the coating function and new requirements. Discussion How do factory workers adopt a Windows based information system? This question can be answered with this case shortly ‘Not well’. There are though things to consider that relate to the situation in that organization at that time. The answer could be quite other if the study was to be carried out in this year. Was the coating information system a success or a failure? When measured with DeLone’s (1992) measurer it seems that the system quality and the information quality were satisfied and they met the requirements. The use didn’t pass the test, neither did the user satisfaction. The individual impact was poor and that kept also the organizational impact poor. Measured by DeLone’s measurer the coating information system was a failure at least until it was taken again into use after some time. Because of the unfamiliar factory environment and especially of the coating task the designer needed a lot of help from the people doing the coating. Actually there would not be any computerized information system without the help and participation of the users.

There were two men representing the workers who were selected to participate in the implementation project. Engler (1996) offers a four-step approach to involve users. In this case the men could present their will to participate and they were contacted very often at the beginning to give the designer an idea of their needs. According to Engler the several meetings and discussions with the users helped both the designer and the users to understand the language that was used. When using the Window interface it is assumed that certain terms and tools will be understood – like ‘space bar’, ‘window’, ‘field’, ‘menu’, ‘tab-key’. When coating cable there are working phases that are specific to the coating and the terms cannot be commonly known. The discussions helped the designer to use the right coating terms and understand the whole picture of coating. They were though not the only ones who the designer interviewed. Cairns (1991) reminds of the importance of the users when they are delivering their knowledge to be used in the development phase. The users were able to participate in the designing phase like Markus (1983) reminds in her article. The managerial level was the starter of this whole project and gave all support to the process. It seems that even great user involvement alone is not enough to reduce user resistance. The new information system was more technical than its predecessor because it needed a microcomputer to be used instead of a pencil and paper. It is obvious that this is a reason for user resistance. The users considered the new system as “not user friendly” because they didn’t like it at all. According to Markus this increases user resistance. Somehow the author thinks that the workers in their coating line were used to do their job in their own ways and didn’t want to change. It increases user resistance. Finally – the idea for the new information system came from the managerial level to serve the quality purposes. The workers didn’t get any benefit from doing this extra work, learning Windows user interface and inserting information about coating. They felt it was time-consuming and in vain from their point of view. It seems that also this point from Markus’ list increased user resistance. The workers worked in a factory environment that was untidy and noisy. Their main purpose was to coat cable and they were mainly not interested in information system development or use. This is a question of culture and learning capabilities in that organization as Ayas (2001) mentioned in her article. The prototype helped the designer a lot in understanding the requirements of the information system. The workers were not used to specify what they actually wanted (like Jiang wrote in his article 2002) and with the prototype they could see what the computerized information system actually means, what kind of information it needs and how the information of the earlier written cable types can be retrieved from the database. In this phase the users had to be able to specify the key information that was to be used when finding the cable type. Earlier they could browse the paper files or search the A4sheets from the tables and they could see the whole sheet at a glance. In Table 1 there are listed the most obvious reasons of resistance seen in the case and the actions against them. The unknown interface was the easiest task to win and the playing gave also positive atmosphere among the workers. In the beginning the new information system seemed more complicated as it was, because the electrical sheet included all the

different A4-sheets with the information that was gathered from coating different cable types. Table 1. Reasons of resistance. Reason Unknown user interface

Influencing tool Playing, training

Unwilling to change New system complicated

Discussions Training, information

New system difficult to use

System development, training

New system useless

Attitude training, information

Reaction Decrease of resistance to change No action Decrease of resistance to change Decrease of resistance to change No action

The users seemed to be unwilling to change because they didn’t use the new information system until they had to. It was like the technology conflicted with the user’s personal interests (Griffith 1999). The users were hired to coat cable, not to progress information technology. It is difficult to say if the discussions helped the situation or not. At least at the end of the implementation project the use was not as frequent as it could have been. In the beginning the new system seemed to be complicated because the users had to choose the cable type with some key information from the database in order to get the parameters for the current cable type. Earlier they could find that information sheet just by browsing the paper files and by glancing the paper sheets. This meant that the new application made it more difficult to find the current coating information. This was helped by training and afterwards the users were satisfied with the parameters they could get from the database. The new system was difficult to use because of the need to use mouse. Later it was no more problem. There was also need to develop the system because there were problems to change page in the system. It was adjusted by fixing the page length in the solution. The last listed reason of resistance was the most difficult to eliminate because of the big resistance among the workers. Attitude training and information seemed to give no solution to this problem. Keefe (2003) refers to problems in motivation and in this coating case the motivation was not found. The author believes that there will remain information system implementations that will fail because of resistance. Some of the resistance come from such factors that cannot be influenced on.

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