The CIM Project

Description

The CIM Project: Abstract

The objective of the CIM (Credit Insurance Management) project was the complete restructuring of the IT systems that supported the management and marketing of the Credit Insurance products offered by CanLife, a major Canadian life insurance company. The project was scheduled to run over a period of two years. During the development phase, two new sub-projects were added without apparent difficulty.

The system was finally delivered in October 1998, on time and on budget. It was not long, however, before flaws began to surface: system overloading, innumerable defects, inadequate architecture, and an inaccurate estimation of processing and storage capacities. Added to all these problems was the complete absence of a global system overview due to an ill-conceived decentralization policy that resulted in a system that was managed by an assortment of independent modules. Confronted with an imminent catastrophe, the company was forced to rapidly diagnose the situation and come up with appropriate solutions.

Additional information

Also available in French.

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