"There should have been a staged

cycle of develop-test...and test again," he writes in an e-mail message.

But the administrators running the project say that the date was carefully considered and absolutely necessary.

According to Huidekoper, the University needed the new system before the New Year to be Y2K compliant. July 1 was picked to coincide with the beginning of the University's fiscal year.

Moriarty adds the system was ready to go and was desperately needed. He says they knew a bumpy start was inevitable regardless of when the project was launched.

"There will always be a trade-off between fully addressing the local requirements across the University and deciding to go ahead," he says.

Moriarty likens a major systems implementation to a large building project.

"There aren't many happy users when you renovate a library and the library is kept open," he says. "These are tough, difficult projects everywhere."

Moriarty says it is only reasonable to assume improvements will have to be made on a system as massive as ADAPT.

Fineberg says the University was forced to put some user requests on hold in order to get the system running.

"We made purposeful design compromises taken from endless discussion," he says.

The Next Steps

The problem with ADAPT is larger than flawed bits and bytes--larger, even, than its ballooning budget.

Those involved say it has been the story of what happens when the people who run Harvard do not listen to each other.

Users say to regain their confidence, the project leaders must make this system work and convince them they will have more input in the future.

Project leaders say they are now in fact taking concrete steps to fix the financial system.