The NOMIS prison project failed due to poor planning and management issues. It was doomed to fail as early as 2007 when costs had exceeded £155 million and the project was two years behind schedule. The most difficult contributing factor to prevent was optimism bias, where project managers overestimated benefits and underestimated costs and timelines. Management failed to properly plan resources, establish governance structures, and monitor finances. The large scale of the project required thorough strategic planning and contingency planning that was lacking.

1. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MANAGEMENT TU6414
GROUP ASSIGNMENT
CASE STUDY 1 : UK PRISONER
GROUP MEMBERS:
ANIS AKLIMA KAMARUDIN
NUR ILYANA ISMARAU TAJUDIN
SURYANI MAARAF
SITI ZAILEHA BT A SALAM

2. QUESTION 1 : WHY DID THE NOMIS PROJECT FAIL
ANSWER
From the given case study, major contributor to the NOMIS project failure is no
alignment between IT and others corporate entities. These IT project was
separated with organization managerial issue. As we know the IT leader and top
management must be promotes a partnership between them in order to archive
the business goal and in this case to shot the project completion due to given
dateline.
According to this article, there are three common reason why this project fail:
a) Poor-quality data
- The data used to assess the project is inadequate or just plain
wrong
- A project team may pick up an idea and run with it before
critically evaluating desired outcomes and alternatives.

3. QUESTION 1 : WHY DID THE NOMIS PROJECT FAIL
ANSWER
b) Optimism Bias
- People too confident with the prejudice that the project will be
managed through existing resources and archive the project
dateline
- more focus is given to the results and benefits rather than the
project management process.
c) Strategic misrepresentation (deception)
- Maybe there is incentives to make the project look good in paper in
order to get the project approved or to win the contract.
- Provide unrealistic cost estimates and delivery timetables

4. QUESTION 1 : WHY DID THE NOMIS PROJECT FAIL
(contd…)
According to the full report by National Audit Office (NAO) in 2009, below are the
reasons for the delay and cost increases by this project.
a) There was inadequate oversight by senior management
• The senior management (NOMS Board) did not actively monitor the project.
b) NOMS did not put appropriate resources and structures in place to deliver
such a complex project.
• Overall governance and resources are not equal with the large scale of the
project.
• The roles and responsibilities of the project team is not clear
• Inadequate skills of the resources
• The combination of various department make the project complicated.
c) Programme management was poor in key aspects, including planning,
financial monitoring and change control.
• The overall planning is very optimistic and there is no contingency plan.
• No budget monitoring. Just monitor on spending rather than matching cost
with deliverable.
• Change control is weak.

5. QUESTION 2 : GIVEN WHAT YOU HAVE READ WHEN WAS
THE PROJECT DOOMED TO FAIL?
From the articles, the project doomed to fail estimate in earlier
planning of the project. But the management realized it in 2007. At
that time, they actually 2 years late. In this year , they had spent £155
million and was two years behind schedule. NAO in their full report
stated that NOMS Board made aware of cost overruns for first time in
2007.
This project failures can be detected at the beginning of the project,
it is because no proper planning and attention to detail process
involved in the project. Strategic planning is too important in order to
shot the project or business goal.
The effects from improper planning occurred in 2007 which wrong
time estimation contribute to such situation of project delayed and
behind the schedule. Over expenses are happened also due to wrong
budget estimation.

6. QUESTION 2 : GIVEN WHAT YOU HAVE READ WHEN WAS THE
PROJECT DOOMED TO FAIL?
Sources : National Audit Office (NAO), 2009

7. Question 3: Did the human dynamic mention by Dr
Mitchell play a role in the NOMIS project failure?
Explain?
As mention in the article the people who is involve in this project was to
optimize about their belief (*macho management) that they can
archive the goal through the available resource and dateline stated
without step by step guideline by proper strategic planning. This is
main reason for leading this project into bust :
 Macho management here is refer to a group of manager who is
responsible to make a decision and belief they had a total right to make
decisions, directing, controlling and enforcing order over a workforce.
Ted Ritter in his article on ComputerWeekly.com says that the
management of the National Offender Management Services did
manage the establish causes of the failure of NOMIS. This prove that
the human dynamic play a role in the NOMIS project failure.

8. Question 3: Did the human dynamic mention by Dr Mitchell
play a role in the NOMIS project failure? Explain?
The governance or leadership of this large project must be established to
monitor the project delivery and spending. Roles and responsibilities must
clearly define for example the project team or the technical support team and
they must have adequate skill resources to monitor the customization of the
system. Because the budget increased when there are no controlled on the
system customization.
 Besides that, the management must also have a good supplier management.
They must have an SLA (service level agreement) where they clearly stated
the payment scheduling, penalties and change control process. Surprisingly,
from the article given, the cost of the project is doubling. Why? Because they
just spend the money without matching it with the system deliverable.

9. QUESTION 4 :Of the 3 reason why the projects go so wrong, Which
reason do you think the most difficult to prevent? Explain?
Answer:
The most difficult reason to prevent is reason number 2 : Optimism Bias
Explain:
Optimism bias is the related for people to be overly positive when making
predictions about the outcomes of future planned actions.
Parameters of the project is heavily influenced by confidence, they overstate
the benefits and understate the scale and costs, both capital and operating.
Optimism bias results and prognostic influence in policy, planning,
management will affect the company. For example, the cost and time required
to complete the planned results tend to be underestimated and the benefits for
granted as optimistic bias. It is very difficult to eliminate the optimistic bias,
however some people believe that trying to reduce the optimistic bias will
encourage people to adapt to health-protective behaviors. Optimistic bias
cannot be reduced, and that by trying to reduce the optimistic bias the end
result was generally even more optimistically biased. Although tried to reduce
the optimistic bias through reducing distance, overall, the optimistic bias still
remains.

10. QUESTION 4 :
 The phenomenon of optimism bias regarding organizational dynamics as a
potential cause for unrealistic expectations on schedules and budgets.
A theoretical framework needs to be introduced to examine how optimism bias
regarding organizational dynamics can affect the performance of construction
processes. A variety of “what-if” scenarios is tested. It show that managers who
maintain an unbiased attitude during project planning tend to outperform those
having either an optimistic or a conservative approach.
Optimism bias renders business case unrealistic. For the business case makes
rosy assumptions that don't reflect business realities.
Optimism bias also cause the expectation, with regard to resources as well as
time required, were very unrealistic. This has resulted in consistently
underestimated costs and overestimated benefits and delivery delays.
The problem is getting bigger, because projects get bigger. So, the good
planning and back up plan is needed. For large scale of project they must have
good resources and planning.

11. THE END