Critique of an Insurance Software Development Project

Seminar paper from the year 2001 in the subject Computer Science - Programming, grade: 90%, UNITEC New Zealand (Departement of Information Systems and Computing), course: Managing Information Technology Projects, 3 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: In April 1994 the insurance company Giga Safe Corp. started a software development project. Its goal was to develop a software to automate medical insurance quotes. It was scheduled as a six-month project and should be ready by January 1, 1995, when Giga Safe's new rates were to be released. However, although the project started with a highly motivated team and high expectations, it missed all deadlines and was not completed until May 1995. To sum things up, the project failed mostly because of bad scheduling and planning, as well as insufficient management control and decreasing team morale. With a more structured approach to project management and better planning the project could have been completed in a shorter time.