Circumventing the app dev organization altogether

Sometimes, a business unit funds a project out of its own pocket without including the application development team. One business unit at a major consumer products manufacturer selected a vendor to install and customize a Web-based app. This choice seemed expedient and safe: The vendor’s staff would be responsible for customization, so there didn’t seem to be a need for corporate IT. The corporate IT director related, “By the time my team was called in, the project had progressed to user acceptance testing — but nothing was working.” Because it had excluded its own in-house technical experts, the business unit failed to ensure that the vendor’s technology could integrate with existing systems. And nobody in the business unit likely had the expertise to manage a systems integration project. Even when outsourcing or package acquisition is the right choice, app dev must be involved to manage the technical risks.