According to senior faculty officials involved in the project, a number of advisory committees stopped meeting early in 1998.

"I think during that year and a half [before the launch] it is fair to say that the people from the faculties--both the end users and school financial offices--were listened to less," said a senior financial administrator from one of the faculties. "The project changed to be viewed much more as a central project. I think it started out being viewed much more as a University project."

Yet this was the same time span in which some of the project's most crucial decisions were made, including which systems would go online in July.

A Premature Launch?

But central administrators say they involved the faculties along the way.

For instance, faculty officials signed off on so-called "requirements documents," which set out many of the details which are now sources of irritation.

Some of the same faculties that bemoan the problems were among those who agreed to the "requirement documents."

But Moriarty says he is not surprised that faculty officials don't see these documents as signs that they were fully informed.

Moriarty should know. He was the chief information officer at the medical school during the development process.

He acknowledges that it can be difficult to see what is missing from a proposed piece of software when looking at hypothetical specifications on a piece of paper.

"Generically asking for requirements doesn't do it," he says.

While officials in all capacities now say now they wish consultations had gone differently, most agree that the people who would actually use the systems--the "end-users"--did not have enough input.

"It was unbelievably participatory in certain components of the community and not participatory enough in others," Moriarty says. "The amount of end-user involvement in a number of cases was clearly inadequate."

Many users say they wish they had been better consulted especially in the months leading up to July's launch date.

They say that had such conversations taken place, they would have pushed the central administration to hold off on launching the system until all the kinks were ironed out.

Wofsy says more users should have had more chances to evaluate the systems before they were put into use.