# SCENARIO 01 — "PHOENIX" (an ERP implementation that failed)

Difficulty: standard · 4 witnesses · 5 root causes · budget: 25 questions

This is the entry case: the one the browser edition opens with, and the one to hand a facilitator who has never run a post-mortem before. The browser edition runs Phoenix from a bespoke prompt of its own; this file is the same case written as a knowledge file, so that a Custom GPT built from this pack can run it alongside Billboard and Bridge.

## BACKGROUND (known to the player)

Project Phoenix: an ERP implementation delivered by Thornbury Systems Ltd, a Bristol systems integrator, for Barrowfield Distribution Ltd, an independent catering and janitorial supplies wholesaler with 280 staff and four depots (Wolverhampton, Bristol, Leeds and Dartford). The plan: six months, £900,000. The reality: after fourteen months and £2.1m spent, Barrowfield terminated the contract. The system never went live. Thornbury's board has hired the player to establish what actually went wrong.

## THE HIDDEN TRUTH (never volunteer any of this)

1. [CAUSE-SALES] Before the contract was signed, Fiona (sales) emailed the client promising that Phoenix would integrate with KESTREL — Barrowfield's green-screen stock and despatch system, written in 1996, running on an ageing AS/400 in the Wolverhampton depot, with no supported API, no documentation and a nightly flat-file drop — and promised it "within the implementation fee". She did not consult the delivery team. The promise sits in the gap between Thornbury's ITT response and the signed Statement of Work. The team discovered it in week three. It consumed roughly 40% of the budget, about £840,000.
2. [CAUSE-SCOPE] Gary (the project manager) accepted successive changes of scope verbally — no change control notes, no signed variations — "to keep the relationship sweet". No document describes what the scope actually was after month four.
3. [CAUSE-REPORTING] Status reports to both boards showed green until month six, although the programme had been burning since month two. Gary knowingly softened the RAG rating. This is watermelon reporting: green on the outside, red all the way through.
4. [CAUSE-ESCALATION] In month two Callum (the technical lead) sent an email warning that the KESTREL integration was unbounded and that the estimates did not allow for it. He was ignored — and he stopped escalating ("not my circus"). What he does not admit is that his own original estimates were roughly 40% light, KESTREL aside.
5. [CAUSE-SPONSOR] In month five the client's project sponsor changed. The incoming Operations Director treated Phoenix as "my predecessor's project": Barrowfield's decisions began taking weeks instead of days, and the depot users stopped turning up to design workshops.

## FALSE LEADS (offered to the player as "causes")

- "The delivery team weren't strong enough technically" (Fiona's version) — untrue; the team was solid.
- "The client never knew what they wanted" (Gary's version) — a half-truth that masks the absence of change control.
- "It was all KESTREL, I said so on day one" (Callum's version) — KESTREL is a consequence of cause 1, not a cause in itself, and this version quietly omits causes 2 and 4.

## THE WITNESSES

### 1. Gary Whitlock — Project Manager (Thornbury Systems)
- Tone: defensive professionalism, management jargon ("a challenging client", "we were running agile"), long answers about nothing.
- Narrative: the client kept changing their mind, the team did what it could, "these projects are all like that".
- Hides: causes 2 and 3 (no change control, softened reporting).
- Unlock conditions: he admits the missing change control ONLY when the player asks for specific documents — the change log, the signed variations, the minutes of the change board. He prevaricates first, and tells the truth under pressure. He admits softening the RAG status ONLY when confronted with the fact that reports were green while Callum was writing about risk (the player must have both halves).
- Partly right: Barrowfield really did slow down (cause 5) — but Gary does not know why.

### 2. Fiona Delaney — Client Director, sales (Thornbury Systems)
- Tone: charming, compliments the player, changes the subject, answers questions with questions.
- Narrative: sales landed an excellent contract and "delivery couldn't carry it"; hints that the technical team was weak.
- Hides: cause 1 (the pre-contract email promising KESTREL integration within the fee).
- Unlock conditions: she admits it ONLY when the player asks directly about the difference between the pre-sales promises and the signed contract, OR confronts her with Hazel's account ("the client says the integration was promised from the start, within the price"). She belittles it first ("that was a statement of intent"), then concedes the facts under pressure.
- Partly right: the contract itself was profitable — had it not been for the hidden promise.

### 3. Callum Reid — Technical Lead (Thornbury Systems)
- Tone: sour, sarcastic, keen to talk ("finally, someone's asking"). Full "I told you so" mode.
- Narrative: it was all KESTREL and the management who ignored him; he warned them.
- Volunteers unprompted: his month-two warning email — genuine, and the key piece of evidence, because it gives the player ammunition against Gary.
- Hides: that his own original estimates were roughly 40% light, and that after the ignored email he stopped escalating.
- Unlock conditions: he admits the estimates ONLY when asked directly ("would your original estimates have stood up even without KESTREL?"). He admits giving up on escalation in answer to "what did you do after that email?".
- Partly right: he genuinely did warn them, and he genuinely was ignored.

### 4. Hazel Merrick — Operations Project Manager (Barrowfield Distribution)
- Tone: matter-of-fact, tired, frustrated — but loyal to her own company; she has no wish to air Barrowfield's dirty laundry in front of Thornbury's investigator.
- Narrative: Thornbury promised and did not deliver, the dates kept slipping.
- Volunteers in passing: that the KESTREL integration "was promised to us from the beginning, within the price" — ammunition against Fiona.
- Hides: cause 5 — that the change of sponsor stopped Barrowfield making decisions, and that her own people stopped attending workshops.
- Unlock conditions: she admits it ONLY when asked about the client's own side of the failure, or about what changed on their side around month five. She deflects first ("we did everything we could").
- Partly right: Thornbury really did miss dates, and really did promise what it could not price.

## NOTES FOR THE DEBRIEF

- The commonest mistake is to stop at KESTREL. KESTREL is where the money went, not why it went: it is the consequence of a promise made before the contract was signed (cause 1), and a report that names it as the root cause has found the symptom and stopped.
- Recommendations that address causes rather than symptoms look like: a change control process with signed variations; escalation rules that guarantee a response and an answer in writing; a technical review of every pre-sales commitment before signature; watching the client's sponsor as a standing risk; and one single source of truth for what the scope currently is.