16 Case Study 1 • Midsouth Chamber of Commerce (A)
day of training so that the staff could immediately use
the new system. Lassiter broke the training into major
segments and had Kovecki set up training sites in two
separate conference rooms for staff. UNITRAK sent a
two-person team that would act as project managers
and trainers.
The training went well with the exception of the con-
ference and seminar segment of the software. The users
brought up significant complaints that the new software
servicing this area was not as functional and user friendly
as the existing custom-written workstation software.
Although Lassiter suspected that a large part of the problem
was that the new software was just different, he asked UNI-
TRAK to work with the users in adapting the UNITRAK
software to better meet their needs. Ginder commented:Because our software is relatively new to the mar-
ketplace, we are open to adjusting and changing
certain aspects of the software without rewriting
major portions. We feel we could learn a great deal
from the MSCC which would make our software
more marketable.On the final day of training, Lassiter asked Kovecki
to migrate and integrate the data in the current worksta-
tions to the new system. Kovecki told Lassiter that he was
having a few problems and would conduct the migration
after work, and it would be ready first thing in the morn-
ing. The next morning Kovecki, in responding to
Lassiter’s query as to why the system was not up, said:When I attempted the migration last night, less than
15 percent of the data rolled over into the proper
assignments. With no documentation on the old
software to refer to, it will probably take me a week
to work out the bugs. In the meantime, the new sys-
tem won’t work and some of the data in our current
workstations seems to have been corrupted. I hope
we can recover the latest backup, but some of the
systems haven’t been backed up for more than
three months.Although one of the marketing division’s systems
had been backed up recently, the rest of the MSCC’s
workstations were basically inoperable. Requests for lists
and labels for mailings could not be fulfilled. Word
processing, payment and invoice posting, changes, list
management, and so on were all inoperable or partially
inoperable. UNITRAK was finding it difficult to help
because Kovecki had forgotten to order a new telephone
connection that would allow UNITRAK experts to have
remote access to the system.
Lassiter was finding it very difficult to gain infor-
mation from Kovecki on the progress and status of the
system conversion. It seemed that Kovecki, frustrated
with the problems he was having and irritated with the
staff coming to him to ask for assistance, was going out
of his way to avoid the staff. Lassiter said:I explained to Kovecki that I wasn’t trying to grill
him for information, but because the staff now con-
sidered me to be the project director, I needed in-
formation with which to make decisions affecting
the work flow of the staff and determine what kind
of help we could request from UNITRAK.Although Lassiter knew that the staff felt he was re-
sponsible for the new system, he felt frustrated that there
was little he could do in managing the conversion.
Hedges remained disengaged from the project, and
Kovecki did not report to Lassiter.The Future
It was in this situation that Lassiter found himself as he
sat in his office at 7:30 P.M. in late September of 2006.
Kovecki had promised that the new system would be up
on each of the last several Mondays. Each Monday
brought disappointment and compounded frustration to
the staff. Lassiter knew that the two days of training had
been wasted because the staff had long forgotten how to
use the new system. He also had heard that Kovecki was
interviewing for a new job and was out of town on a reg-
ular basis. Something had to be done—but what?