Because really, what could go wrong?

This healthcare IT vendor's install group takes a very businesslike approach to rolling out applications, according to a pilot fish on the inside.

"The primary goal was to bring up multimillion-dollar systems with minimal disruption to the day-to-day end users," fish says.

"The ways we achieved this included, but weren't limited to, observing how the end users worked currently and asking them what would make their jobs easier."

But it appears that approach isn't universal at the company. Case in point: the rollout of a new version of the system that handles customer-satisfaction surveys for trouble tickets.

The survey system is more than three years old, so it's ripe for replacement. And several months of planning have gone into the switchover, under the purview of upper management.

But as the rollout approaches, only some of the vendor's employees are notified that the old system is being shut down -- and then only four days in advance.

And then they learn that no one will have access to any of the survey data for a month as the new system is being brought up.

And none of the workflow automation developed on the old system will be migrated.

And none of the people completing the surveys will be notified in advance of the change.

And there will be no training on the new system.

Sighs fish, "Upper management put a lot of emphasis on good survey scores, and looking for opportunities in a bad survey score. But based on this, I have to wonder if either the end users or the survey scores matter after all."

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