Put on a Project Manager hat and go over the case. There are five questions for discussion at the end of the case presentation.
Instructions & Suggestions
- Create an MS Word document with a cover page, as in previous assignments.
- Type up each question and then write your answer following the question.
- While your answers will reflect to some degree your previous work experience in general, and project management in particular, whether you have that previous experience or not, it is always a good idea for any case study and/or research to elaborate on your answers, and support them with explanations, facts, and citations, as the case may be. It will give the reader a better understanding of your line of thought.
- Please proofread & spellcheck your work before submission.Sloppy phrases, misused or missing words, unfinished thoughts etc. leaves the content to the reader's interpretation rather than conveying the message you intended
IDEA GROUP PUBLISHING 1331 E. Chocolate Avenue, Hershey PA 17033-1117, USA Tel: 717/533-8845; Fax 717/533-8661; URL-http://www.idea-group.com #IT5565 Mismanaging a Technology Project: The Case of ABC Inc. John H. Benamati University of Kentucky Ram Pakath University of Kentucky John Benamati is an independent information technology consultant. His research investigates the effects of rapidly changing IT on the management of information from an IT providers’ perspective. Previously, Mr.Benamati was an information systems professional for over 12 years and has held positions in internal IS organizations, IT technical marketing, and IT consulting and services. Dr. Ram Pakath is an Associate Professor of Decision Science and Information Systems at the University of Kentucky. His current research focuses on hybrid and adaptive problem processors and multimedia systems. Dr.Pakath’s work has appeared in such forums as Decision Sciences, Decision Support Systems, European Journal of Operational Research, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Information and Management, and Information Systems Research. He is author of the book Computerized Support Systems for Business: A Concise Introduction (Copley) and an Associate Editor of Decision Support Systems. Executive Summary A common misconception is that technology can solve problems. Very often, the people and processes involved have significant impacts on the success or failure of a particular piece of technology in addressing a problem. This case is a classic example of how not to manage a technology project. It describes how a client, a vendor, and a sub-vendor exercised poor judgment in dealing with one another in applying client-server technology to a project of mammoth proportions. In the end, there were no real winners and the project, which came close to abortion, is now progressing to a slow finish, many valuable months and dollars behind what were originally estimated. One learns that it is not merely enough getting a customer “involved” in a project from the very beginning. Learning who the key players are, engendering and fostering a feeling of mutual trust and commitment to the end result (i.e., a successful project-development partnership), educating the customer about technology and process re-engineering possibilities, exercising adequate authority and control, and, perhaps, iterative, multivendor-based project design and implementation are all critical elements of a successful technology venture. This case is based on reality. We have, however, changed the identities of the parties involved and other key information to preserve anonymity. Background The organization of interest is the State Health Services Department of a state located in the southern region of the United States. The department was formed in the early 1900s. From a 10-person, 1-office startup, located in the capitol, the organization grew over the years into a large conglomerate with 125 sub-organizations. Each sub-unit is a County Health Department, located in and serving one of the 125 counties in the state. Today, the entire operation involves 5,500 employees of whom about 900 are doctors. The organization seeks to provide affordable health care to any and all residents in the state. While it does not deny health care to anyone, regardless of ability to pay, the decision on whether or not a patient is charged is based on the financial standing of the individual. Some patients pay the entire amount due immediately following the visit, others enter into a pro-rated payment arrangement, yet others are treated gratis. In the urban counties, it is the underprivileged who generally frequent a county’s health department despite the availability of private health care. This is so because the latter is often prohibitively expensive for the uninsured and the underinsured. In the rural counties, however, people of all income groups and social standing try to make use of the local health departments due to the paucity of private health care facilities in such areas. It is only when adequate care is unavailable here that these patients begin looking elsewhere. While the organization’s goal is to provide affordable health care to one and all, the various subunits differ in their ability to provide quality care. A substantial part of the reason for this is the inability of the organization to attract and retain appropriately qualified medical personnel and support staff in rural areas. Even in the more urban counties, the salary differential between a doctor employed by the health department and one in the private sector tends to be quite substantial. As such, the department generally attracts professionals with a dedication to the Hippocratic oath and young interns obligated to take up the positions in order to satisfy medical study grant requirements. (Incidentally, a large number of the health department’s medical professionals, particularly in the more rural counties, are also foreign medical graduates who are considerably more resilient about their living and working conditions than United States nationals. This is because, quite often, the conditions are nonetheless better than what their home countries have to offer.) Given this disparity in medical knowledge at the various County Health departments, the supporting infrastructure also varies considerably. A large number of these units, predominantly in the rural areas, operate with a handful of general practitioners — physicians in family health care, obstetrics and gynecology, and pediatrics — and support staff. Almost all units have some kind of in-house pharmaceutical dispensary facility. The relatively larger, urban units have professionals in almost all specialties, as well as surgeons, on call. These larger units also have in-house medical laboratories, x-ray clinics, and well-stocked pharmacies. The State Health Services Department is akin to the central office of a large corporation. Prior planning efforts by the department involved very little apart from the vision that a county-by-county, statewide presence was needed. Over the years, the 125 County Health Departments mushroomed all over the state, their growth and operational needs largely determined locally. This commitment to “state-wide presence above all else” has resulted in all 125 units remaining operational even though, as we shortly discuss, a significant proportion of the sub-units are financially weak. The central office’s role in the day- to-day operations of the county units is largely limited to providing a set of general management guidelines and administering the flow of money to units through budget allocations. Each unit is essentially autonomous in almost all respects, notably in terms of interpretation of recommended management principles/practices and the disposition of allocated budgets. Budget allocation decisions are based on the revenue generated by each unit. Essentially, this implies that a unit’s budget is determined on the basis of the number of patients serviced by it and the types of services provided. As a rule of thumb, the more revenue a unit generates, the more budget it is allocated in the following year. Budgets are used by units for all of their expenses, such as the purchase of medical/office equipment and supplies, hiring and severance of employees, and salaries. Being a government entity, the State Health Services Department is a non-profit organization. As such, apart from revenue generated in-house, it also relies on state and federal subsidies as sources of funding. The sub-units vary widely in terms of their financial strength. One of the county facilities accounts for 40% of total revenue generated. Another two account for an additional 20%. The remaining 122 county units together contribute the rest. The revenue generated by the three larger units is also used to subsidize the operations of the smaller ones. More recently, a need for better communication and sharing of information between the sub-units had emerged. This was partly because families tended to move (either temporarily or permanently) from one county to another and sought services at their new locations. Proper information sharing would, the State Health Department felt, ensure uninterrupted evaluation of their case histories and continuance of any ongoing treatment at the new facilities. Stimulus from an external source, however, was even more compelling: new federal and state regulations for subsidies were increasingly based upon the notions of “preventive care” and “follow-up care.” This thrust was primarily the result of the then-prevalent gloomy economic outlook. Federal and state funding agencies, while becoming more tight-fisted due to spending cuts, were demanding greater bang for the buck by more stringently stipulating how their shrinking funds were to be utilized. The preventive care concept is based on the premise that taking precautionary measures while the patient is free (or in the early stages) of an affliction could curb the onset (or extension) of the condition in the future. Preventive measures are normally prescribed based on an assessment of a patient’s current and past health status and the history of specific ailments in the patient's family tree (some conditions are known to be hereditary). The underlying philosophy is that the benefits of the time, effort, and money spent on preventive care far outweigh the impacts of the risks of not taking such measures. A number of studies (in highly-regarded forums like the Journal of the American Medical Association) have extolled the virtues of this approach. The state and federal funding agencies had come to regard preventive medicine as being potentially more economical (in real dollars) than conventional, reactive medicine. Consequently, these agencies had begun pushing the State Health Services Department to coerce each sub-unit to comply with this philosophy by tugging on their budget strings appropriately. It was not that preventive medicine was an absolutely novel concept to the Health Department. It had always been sporadically practiced by some of the sub-unit physicians on a voluntary basis. The Health Department was now being mandated to make preventive care a key underlying philosophy of its approach to medical practice. Instituting a successful, state-wide preventive care program also meant instituting a well-designed information generation, storage, and sharing program between the sub-units. In addition to the push toward greater preventive care, the agencies had begun mandating increased follow-up or after care in the case of certain services as a further means of conserving costs. As an example, studies have shown that it would be cheaper and healthier to retain a mother and her newborn for up to 72 hours in the hospital following a Cesarean delivery. However, common present-day practice is to rush them home as soon as possible due, quite often, to pressures from the concerned insurance company. Sometimes, a facility