Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
often underestimated the efforts required and have encountered serious
customization limitations in small to mid-market packages.
Customization projects fail for many reasons, including:
The delta requirements are not well understood:
This can happen because either or both sides of the equation
— one's requirements or the baseline functionality — is wrongly
assessed.
Customization turns out to be more difficult than envisaged:
Sometimes the base product is complex and companies begin
trying to customize it without an adequate investment in under-
standing it, thus leading to considerable rework.
Sometimes the customization facilities are just inadequate to get
to the required end state.
The base product has a fundamental incompatibility with your
requirements in terms of the data model or the business logic
employed:
This could be because one's requirements require a sophisti-
cation that does not exist in the product and cannot be added
by the tools.
The product, although intended for your industry, is too generic.
There are limitations to the customization allowed:
There may be limits to the amount of customization that you
can do (e.g., the number of new screens or fields you can add,
etc.).
There are performance problems due to heavy customization.
Management of the customization project does not use a model
that is appropriate for such purpose.
And all the other reasons why software projects fail.
The objective of any implementation is to solve a business problem.
By buying a package that at the very outset was a bad fit, many projects
are reduced to “getting the package to work,” at massive cost to the
company. Managerial egos and reputations can get involved. It would be
a good idea to recognize that this is a likely development and constitutes
“external” bodies to periodically review the situation.
Dominance of the Customization Model
As good OTS products emerge in many functional domains, it is likely
that custom development by IT will be restricted to niche areas where
such products are not available. It is a harbinger for change in the way
