Case Study III-1 • Managing a Systems Development Project at Consumer and Industrial Products, Inc. 441The major problem encountered was the inability to
schedule activities with Disbursements Department people
when they were needed. For example, in early December,
Anderson came to Watkins and told her that his people
would be fully occupied with year-end closing activities
for the last 2 weeks of December and the first 2 weeks of
January and that they would not be available for work on
the PAS project. He was very unhappy with this situation
and apologized for delaying the project. Watkins told him
that she understood that the business came first and that
she would reschedule activities and do what she could to
reduce the impact on the schedule. This potential problem
had been brought up at the steering group meeting in early
November, but the group had decided to go ahead with the
planned schedule.
The PAS Draft Requirements Statement (DRS) was
completed on March 21, 1994, 4 weeks behind schedule,
but only $5,000 over budget. The DRS filled two thick
loose-leaf binders with detailed documentation of the
processes and the data content of the inputs, outputs, data
flows, and data stores in the new system. Preparation of the
Outline Physical Design was projected to require 600
hours over 6 weeks at a cost of $25,000. The DRS was
approved on April 3, 1994, and the Outline Physical
Design phase was begun.
The Outline Physical Design
In the Outline Physical Design phase the IS technical peo-
ple become involved for the first time. They look at the
logical system and consider alternatives as to how it can
be implemented with hardware and new manual proce-
dures. The approach in this phase is to map the processes
in the logical data flow diagrams and the data models to
manual processes and hardware and to make sure that this
proposed hardware can be supplied and supported by the
organization. Programming languages and utilities are
also considered, so at the end of this phase the project
team knows what kind of programming specifications and
technical capabilities will be required.
The PAS system was originally planned to run on the
IBM mainframe, but given the use of a LAN for the
Document Control System, the technical people decided to
move as much of the PAS system to the LAN as possible.
This was a radical change that increased the estimated
development cost substantially.
Watkins’ new estimate of the total cost of the PAS
system was $560,000. This was a substantial increase from
the previous estimate of $250,000 to $350,000, and it
caused some concern in CIPI management. Peter Shaw
asserted:The company treasurer doesn’t care a bit about the
PAS project. All he cares about is how many dollars
are going to be spent and in which year. When the
cost went up so that we were substantially over
budget for this year, that got his attention. If the
increase were for next year it would not be a major
problem because he would have time to plan for it—
to get it into his budget. But this year his budget is
set, so Linda and I have to figure out how we can
stay within our budget and still get a usable system
this year as version 1 and upgrade it to what we
really need next year.On June 27, just as the Outline Physical Design report
was being completed, Watkins’ car accident occurred, tak-
ing her away from work for several months.Anderson’s Concerns
Watkins’ accident focused Anderson’s attention on some
long-standing concerns. He was worried because among
the directors of the five projects he was sponsoring,
Watkins was the best. All of his other projects were behind
schedule and in trouble, and now he did not know what
would happen to the PAS project.
Anderson was fully committed to his strategic direc-
tion for the disbursements area, and he felt that his repu-
tation would be at risk if the systems necessary to support
his planned changes could not be completed successfully.
He was convinced that he had to take decisive action to get
things back on track. He needed a plan of attack to present
to IS Director Charles Bunke at tomorrow’s meeting.