Case Description of Harvest City: The Intelligent Procurement

System Project Case Study

The Harvest City case describes the implementation of a cloud- and IoT-based intelligent
procurement system at a new convention complex in the U.S. Midwest. The decision to build
a convention complex is a strategic initiative for this city and involves extensive use of
information technology. The risk of implementation failure is high. Such fail? users are costly,
highly visible, and affect multiple stakeholders. This case explores the challenges of large-
scale, computer-based system implementation by examining the events, decisions, and
actions taken to implement the intelligent procurement system at Harvest City. This case
helps students to reflect on and discuss the challenges of implementing IT-enabled change
initiatives, especially those that requires streamlined and integrated inter-organizational
processes.

Factors leading to project failure

 Divergence in the project approach:

There were contrasting viewpoint about the Venso’s project approach. The first executive
overhead by Casper, together with Venso, had signed of an integral system approach
contract while the new executive team viewed it as a modular project. As a result they the
new team did not prioritize direct communication with Venso. Instead they surrendered
Miller negotiate with subcontractor. This matter clearly slowed down the implementation
of the intelligent procurement system.
The methodology of project management was not clearly established and understood by all
parties. Some members were acting arbitrary, imposing new specifications and constantly
changing the constraints on one hand. Others could not stand any modification on
requirement on the other. The situation was confusing, nothing showed if they were
whether using the traditional Water flows or new agile approach.

 Late Identification of need business

The planning team failed to survey and identify the tenants need for e-commerce
technologies earlier. Therefore, they included them so late in the requirement; leaving to
Venso no enough time to develop the product. Additionally, that made it complex to
implementation as some of technologies involved in the intelligent procurement system
were supposed to be embedded from day one in the constriction plan.
This trouble brought them into adding new and removing previous specifications at critical
stage of the project. They also had to frequently alter the project scoop and budget in order
to conform to the new specification. Nevertheless Venso, overwhelmed and under pressure
of time, was not willing to consider such recurrent changes of requirement.

 Miscommunication
As the new executive team failed to understand how integral the procurement system was
to the entire project, they consequently refused to communicate with Miller; setting a
chaotic environment of confusion, misunderstanding and miscommunication among key
team member of the project.
The communication kept on worsening so the Harvest city Corporation even dared to go out
of the contract terms: Without Venso’s knowledge, he allowed an unexperienced third party
to tape into the sensor for setting its fire emergency. This arbitrary access to the system,
might have highly contributed to the Mid-November 2016 incident.
Furthermore, Venso’s complaints about the executive team were simply ignored.
Who is mostly at fault?
John Casper’s most fault was to not be able to identify the need of an intelligent
procurement system in time and try to accommodate everything to fit in the timeline.
Mayor Andres Thompson’s major fault was to misuse human resources. Instead of hiring a
new CEO, he compensated the resignation of Casper by diving his responsibility in the
remained members, who was already overwhelmed by events.
Harvest Corporation’s was responsible of not take into account of Venso’s tea members
complaints by ignoring them. The worse mistake was to employ a vendor configure the one
of Venso’s product (the Sensor) without previously informing Venso.