Identify and elaborate on the problems experienced with the project described in the article below.

Waterfall Software Development Robert Adam, the project manager of Renegade, just received a notification that his project was in an idle stage for four hours due to a specification conflict. The conflict came from the disagreement of how to accomplish one of the project tasks. Dangerously, the disagreement was built around specification deviations, thus delay of the project was likely inevitable. Robert understood his project would make no progress until this issue was resolved. Consequently, if the project did not meet the specifications during the review, it would not progress at all until a correction had been made or modification to the specification document had been approved and recorded. This irritated Robert. So, he called for an emergency meeting with the involved parties. RENEGADE Renegade is a health insurance provider in the southeast region. The company has employed the "waterfall" methodology for their software development projects. The waterfall methodology assumes that projects can be managed better when segmented into a hierarchy of phases, stages, activities, tasks, or steps. The waterfall methodology therefore directs a software development project to progress in an orderly sequence of development steps. This also means concurrent development steps of a project are prohibited. Renegade has experienced a rapid growth over the years. In just a short five - year span, the numbers of subscribers have increased from two hundred thousand to more than one million subscribers. Management predicts even more growth. This number is only the subscribers, and their dependents are not included in this number. Therefore, the rapid growth of subscribers means extensive data to manage for Renegade. The company has been using Microsoft Access as their data management system. Renegade realizes the limitations of MS Access in managing large amounts of data, now that they must deal with their aggressive demands. Therefore, an upgrade to more sophisticated data management systems is a must. After some research, top business managers decided to convert the database. Management system to Oracle, which should have been able to provide flexibility, ability to manage huge amounts of data, expandability, and referential integrity.

THE PROJECT To respond to this need, Renegade initiated a project whose purpose was to implement: Oracle database with proper connectivity to the existing system, and Safe data transfer from MS Access to Oracle Project Budget: $ 200, 000 Project Duration: 10 weeks The pharmacy department (PD) was responsible for the project and its cost. The PD selected Robert Adam as the project manager and Leila Rakoba as the business analyst, both of whom were very experienced individuals. Robert was the main person in charge of any problem/issue/concern regarding the project. He was responsible for all aspects of the project, including project schedule, development matrix, budgeting, and issue escalations. Leila was the major point of contact for the user. She was responsible for collecting all the requirements from the users and documenting them in the business requirement document. WATERFALL SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT As mentioned, like other projects this project followed the waterfall software development model. The project must finish each phase and go through a final walkthrough (FWT) before it could move forward. The formal walkthrough committee usually involved the phase completion check - off and presided over all sign - offs. The committee consisted of managers from different functional areas. Robert was also involved in the FWT but was not part of the committee. So, his signature was not required for phase completion sign - off. The purpose for the FWT meeting was to ensure that specification requirements. of the phase were clearly met and documented. Requirements must be validated and exit criteria must be satisfied before the project could progress. In other words, the waterfall model created disciplined project management and ensured the adequacy of documentation and design reviews. It set all requirements, schedules, and expectations before the project kick - off. Figure 3.1 shows a preliminary outline that represents the overall process of software development life cycle at Renegade.

Figure 3.1 Software Development Life Cycle Initiation Planning User/Business Implementation Specification Requirement-BA > Functional R't Test > Functional Doc-SA Specification-SA >Technical Spec > System Doc-Developer > Development Architecture Unit Test Plan-Dev > Integration Deployment Matrix-PM Doc-SE > Code and Unit and System Documentation Testing plan > Requirement Test Standard Maintenance > Project Plan-PM Analyses > User Product Visibility > Data Model- Acceptance > Release >FWT Risk Management Test-TA Document-RE >DBA DA Documentation > Test Data and >Environment User Support >FWT Reports Test > Documentation >FWT FWT FWT > Baseline >FWT