Intractable ERP

Abstract

An enterprise-resource-planning system --- or ERP system, for short --- is by definition "any software system designed to support and automate the business processes of medium and large businesses." [16] Integrated ERP systems became popular in the early 1990's. Single monolithic pieces of software, ERP systems promised to do away with inconsistent data, incompatible formats, and uncooperative applications.Still, ERP systems come with their own, unexpected difficulties. Their tremendous generality and enormous complexity make them prone to glitches and low performance, difficult to maintain, and nightmarish to implement.This study takes a close look at four ERP-implementation failures, all of which occurred recently in American industry. It analyses possible causes that led to the disasters, and suggests software-engineering processes that help avoiding such outcomes. The Model-Based Architecting and Software Engineering (MBASE) guidelines, developed by Professors Barry Boehm and Daniel Port at the Center for Software Engineering (CSE) at USC, provide a base for these elaborations.The original workout is actually far more extensive than the abridgement published here. It can be downloaded from the CSE web page. Alternatively, it may be ordered from the author directly through email.

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