Introduction to the Victorian Myki Smart Card Project

The project that is chosen for review in this report is the Victorian Myki Smart Card project. Myki is a reloadable credit card-sized contactless smart card. Myki contactless card is associated with the ticketing system that supports electronic payment methods for the payment of fares in the majority of the public transport services in regional Victoria and Melbourne. The Myki smart card became fully operational at the end of 2012 after replacing the Metcard ticketing system. Kamco developed the Myki smart card system, and the project is owned by Public Transport Victoria (Culnane et al., 2019). The Myki project was one of the most important projects undertaken by Public Transport Victoria; however, it faced certain major issues and criticisms. This is mainly because of its extended delivery time and the huge costs that were incurred for the project. The project started in May 2005 and was scheduled to be delivered in March 2007. However, the project was extensively delayed, and its full delivery could not be possible before 2013.

In the following section of the report, a detailed discussion on the project, its reason for controversies and an evaluation of the reason for controversies are presented.

The Myki smart card project faced several controversies associated with its implementation and delivery. Myki project faced issues of cost and schedule overrun. The Victorian government had invested more than AU$1 billion in the Myki smartcard ticketing system for replacing the Metcard system, which had no visible issues. The first controversy was therefore related to the “need” of introducing and implementing the Myki project even though the Metcard system had no visible issues or problems.

The second controversy is related to time. The time taken to develop and deliver the Myki project was four times its initial estimation, which was two years. The project was expected to be completed within two years; however, the final product could not be delivered before nine years. This raises questions regarding the inefficiencies of the project teams in the planning, management and execution of a software project (Martin and Victory 2008). The team had highly underestimated the total time needed for the project. This resulted in controversy related to the complexity of the project and the ability of the project team to deliver such projects.

Another controversy related to this project was related to the cost. It was identified that the initial cost as per the original contract of the project was vaguely specified and was significantly over ambitious (Tran and Jones 2006.). While the execution of the project, the state incurred significant additional and unanticipated costs related to the project resulting in the project facing a cost overrun of 55 per cent. This was not expected from such an important and high priority project.

Reasons for Controversy

Furthermore, even after the project delivery, the stakeholders had no idea about Myki’s operational performance. This is mainly because of the lack of a well-planned performance monitoring process related to the project. All these issues and controversies indicate a failure in effective project management and delivery in Myki smart card project.

According to Davey Wickramasinghe and Dakich (2013), the Myki smartcard project was one of the most important projects undertaken by the Victorian government; however, this project failed to keep up to the expectations of its stakeholders. Hence, the Myki project is considered a project failure. The project was a failure mainly because of the issues related to cost and schedule overrun. The issue of cost and schedule overrun mostly indicates an ineffectiveness in the planning and management of the project. According to the author, the project was flawed from the very beginning. While setting the timeframe of the project as two years, the team knew that it might not be realistic (Van Gramberg, Teicher and Keddie, 2013). However, instead of researching and changing the timeframe to a realistic one, they chose to undertake this project as a challenge, which depicts the inefficiencies in terms of project management and delivery. Although the Victorian government was critical of the quality of the project, the team did not ensure proper governance or quality planning, which resulted in the project facing several change requests, adding to the delays and excessive cost overrun.

According to Fagnot, Ye and Desouza (2018), the Myki smartcard project was complex, project yet no measures were taken by the project team in the planning and governance process. Severe issues could be faced with the stakeholders’ engagement process, which resulted in an inoperative governance structure. The success of a large-scale technology project such as the Myki smart card project is largely dependent on the ability of the project team to appropriately plan and manage the quality requirements of the project along with cost, time and resources. However, in this project, none of the attributes was properly followed, resulting in the project’s failure. One of the primary reasons why the project faced the problem of schedule overrun is because of the inexperienced project managers who were associated with the implementation and delivery of this project. This case process is a major lesson learnt in terms of choosing an appropriate project manager and project team. The inability of an inexperienced project manager to correctly identify the time and cost required for the implementation of a large-scale IT project ultimately resulted in its major stakeholder, the Victorian government, facing several costs blow out and quality escalation in the Myki smart card project.

Review

According to Tamm et al. (2014), appropriate decision-making is an important aspect of project management and delivery. However, the Myki smart card project can be considered a classic example of ineffective decision-making. The decision-making problem in this project started during the initiation and planning phases, when the project team set an unrealistic deadline and budget for the implementation of such a large-scale project. The less involvement and engagement of the stakeholders with this project resulted in the Victorian government considering the implementation of the project through an unrealistic deadline. This later resulted in the project facing problems of cost overruns and schedule issues. This is the reason by the time Myki smartcard system could replace the previous Metcard system five years after it was anticipated to be delivered. This project is a classic example of decision-making flaws. According to the authors, the decision-making issues faced in the initiation phase of the project often result in the project facing issues related to cost and schedule overrun, which is faced in the Myki smart card project as well. Hence, proper importance is required to be given to the initiation and planning phases of any project to ensure its successful and timely delivery.

According to Barbaschow (2022), the Myki smartcard project was an overly ambitious and poorly planned project. The entire execution process of the project indicates several flaws in project management and delivery. The improper estimation of the project needs and requirements was large because of the presence of an inexperienced team. The original contract of the project was vaguely specified, and the entire plan was prepared on the basis of that specification. Furthermore, there was very little to no involvement of the stakeholders during the initiation and planning phase of the project, which further contributed to the flawed delivery of the project. The unrealistic estimation in the project could have been managed if the stakeholders were more responsible for the project planning and delivery process. Furthermore, problems related to the lack of proper governance structure further added to the distorted project delivery resulting in the project facing the issues of cost overrun and uncontrolled delays. The author further outlines the lack of proper project monitoring as another major cause of project failure. In large scale IT projects, it is absolutely necessary to ensure appropriate governance so that any issues faced in the project are identified and addressed on time. The lack of the same in the Myki project contributed to its failure.

The analysis of the major controversies linked with the Myki smart card project indicates that there were several flaws in terms of planning and management of the project, which resulted in the project’s failure. The primary reason behind facing the controversies in the project can be linked to the complete lack of adequate care in project initiation, planning and stakeholder engagement.

Issues in Initiation: In the initiation phase of this project, the requirements and the needs of the project were not properly estimated. The schedule and cost estimation were vague, and the entire plan was prepared on the basis of that vague estimation, which resulted in the majority of the problems faced in the Myki project, especially in terms of the cost and schedule (Davey, Wickramasinghe and Dakich 2013).

Issues in Planning: The Vague estimations that were done in the initiation phase of the project resulted in improper project planning. The ineffectiveness of the project plan resulted in several changes in the contract after the project had started its implementation (Le-Nguyen 2019). Furthermore, the plan did not specify the governance structure and needed contractual agreements, which further resulted in facing major issues in the successful and timely delivery of the project.

Issues in Stakeholders Engagement: The Myki smart card project was owned by the Victorian government, which was the primary stakeholder of the project. However, the ineffectiveness in the project planning process resulted in not managing the stakeholders’ expectations from this project, which ultimately led to ineffective stakeholders engagement (Barbaschow 2022). The expectations of the different stakeholders of this project were conflicting. It was the duty of the project manager to ensure regular sharing of the progress report and communicate every major decision with the stakeholders to keep them engaged. The lack of proper stakeholders’ engagement impacted the governance process, thus resulting in controversy.

The analysis of the case of the Myki smart card project and the process of project planning, management and delivery indicates major flaws in the project in terms of project initiation, planning and stakeholders’ engagement. These three are some of the key aspects of project management and are important to be considered in every project, irrespective of its size or type. The Myki smart card project faced major problems and issues related to time management, cost management and project governance, which could have been easily avoided if proper measures had been taken during the initiation and planning phase. Based on the findings from the report, the following recommendation is made, which, if implemented, could have helped in the management of the controversies and better delivery of the project. 

For such a large-scale project, initial estimation is required to be adequate. Therefore, proper time is necessary to be allocated for the execution of the initiation phase. Instead of vague estimation related to cost and time required for project implementation, it was necessary to deploy proper time for better estimation and identification of the needs and expectations of the stakeholders from the project. This would have further helped in the development of an accurate project plan.

Planning phase is one of the most important phases for project execution, and the delivery and presence of an experienced team in the development of a project plan is significantly necessary for ensuring project success. The plan prepared for any project should be realistic, and for that, adequate research and analysis related to the requirements identified in the planning phase is necessary. Myki smart card project was planned on the basis of vague assumptions, which resulted in its failure.

Proper management of the stakeholders’ expectations is suggested as it contributes to the establishment of an adequate governance structure needed for judging the project’s success.

Conclusion 

The report presents a detailed analysis of the Myki smart card project and discusses the critical issues that were faced in the project. The majority of the issues faced in the project could have been avoided if the project team had put the necessary emphasis on the appropriateness of project initiation, planning and stakeholders’ engagement with the project. On the basis of the findings of the report and the issues faced in the Myki smart card project, certain recommendations are made, which can help in addressing and mitigating similar issues in future. My project presents a major lesson learnt in terms of the importance of project initiation, planning and stakeholders’ engagement.

References 

Barbaschow, A. 2022. Myki was poorly planned and overly ambitious: Auditor-general | ZDNet. ZDNet. Retrieved 31 March 2022, from https://www.zdnet.com/article/myki-poorly-planned-and-overly-ambitious-auditor-general/.

Culnane, D., Rubinstein, A., Benjamin, I.P. and Teague, A., 2019. Stop the open data bus, we want to get off. arXiv preprint arXiv:1908.05004.

Davey, B., Wickramasinghe, N. and Dakich, E., 2013. Major eGovernment projects in health, education and transport in Victoria.

Fagnot, I., Ye, C. and Desouza, K.C., 2018. Unpacking complexities of mega-scale public sector information technology projects: An ecosystem perspective. Systemes d’information Management, 23(2), pp.9-41.

Le-Nguyen, C.D., 2019. Research Report On Organisations Apply The Strategic Use Of Is/It To Achieve Is/It-Enabled Innovation

Martin, B. and Victory, M., 2008. Manage by project. Teacher Learning Network, 15(1), pp.23-25.

Tamm, T., Seddon, P.B., Parkes, A. and Kurnia, S., 2014. A model of strategic IT decision-making processes. ACIS.

Tran, V. and Jones, A., 2006. Document Control.