BellaWyn I am with you. I am also in IT but something that no one has mentioned here is how upper management that has NO clue as to the workings of specific programs will make a decision that it has a deadline and "hell or high water" will not postpone it anymore. I think that is what happened here. there was an uneducated deadline date placed on this rollout and no matter how much IT programmers may have fought it, they lost. From what I can see they have a large task ahead of them and I wonder how many of the original designers or PM are still there. Hopefully we can be patient and little by little things will start to get straightened out.
Have no doubt about the clueless upper management related to understanding specifics of IT workings. Management goals and rigid deadlines often get foisted onto IT as the "fix it" solution to a management agenda. What people do not realize, including management, is that developing a functional system that is required to manage the dynamic volume of data transactions that occur is just beasty!! It takes MULTIPLE levels of testing prior to rollout. Each level of testing must be SUCCESSFUL first, prior to going to the next level.
It's likely testing was happening, to some degree, in the development prior to the August 2016 suspensions. But new information came to light during that process and CRITERIA CHANGED. Deadlines were still in place, then delayed (only slightly) but not enough to adequately TEST based on the changed criteria. Now everyone is in "fly by the seat of the pants" mode to meet the deadline. IT would know that a "fail" was imminent with the release and yet the uneducated management pulled the trigger anyway.
So, let's give the uneducated management a brief moment of "benefit of the doubt" break because a lot of people are "clueless" when it comes to all this IT stuff. It's complicated and geek-speak just rolls over the top of our heads, right? Likely in all that geek-speak when management was being told "
will fail, not ready, not enough time to test the changes" it all sounded like "
wah wah wah, Wah wah wah, Meh, Wah wah, Yadda yadda, Zie ga zink" to management because their brains were screaming "
gotta hit the deadline, plug the holes, cannot be that hard, too long to develop, gelt yadda yadda gelt."
OK, break over. ROLLOUT FAILED
But the hubris that refuses to pull it back is still in play. Which results in the delightful Voyager TRIP we are now experiencing.
It is also likely that the original design was intended to be a full implementation of the system. What we are actually experiencing is a phased rollout, with broken pieces, that have gone untested.
HUGE difference in IT strategy.
So, back to
observations from day one of the rollout -- WE, the owners, are now testing the system LIVE as they continue to scramble to populate the various phases.
Can someone please put an umbrella in my drink now?