A product has been released with several open issues that have been ranked as minor by the PM and Project Assurance.

The Board believes that with the functionality released the Business Users can operate and have agreed that Minor releases will be delivered throughout the year to resolved the open items.

Nevertheless, the facts are the following:

• The Business Case required translation into more technical specs and expected behaviours were missed.
• The Development Team communicated that certain bits of the functionality were not working as per the Business expectations and advise a process change that was not aligned with the Business Processes.
• The Project Board approved the content but did not approve any changes to the Business Processes.

The user cannot return to Business As Usual since the functionality is preventing operational processes rather than improving them. Heavy manual intervention is required from Ops to deliver the service to the ultimate customer. The project has just failed.

From my personal point of view, the lack of communication between the Business Users and the Project Team led the project to this position. In order to fully resolved the open items according to specifications throughout the next releases, what level of involvement in Operational side (real business) is required by the PM?