Case 1 Disaster Recovery at Marshall Field’s (Another Chicago River Story)
Early in the morning on April 13, 1992, basements in Chicago’s downtown central business district began to flood. A hole the size of an automobile had developed between the river and an adjacent abandoned tunnel. The tunnel, built in the early 1900s for transporting coal, runs throughout the downtown area. When the tunnel flooded, so did the basements connected to it, some 272 in all, including that of major retailer Marshall Field’s.
…
This case illustrates crisis management, an important aspect of which is having a team that moves fast to minimize losses and quickly recover damages. At the beginning of a disaster there is little time to plan, though companies and public agencies often have crisis guidelines for responding to emergency situations. Afterwards they then develop more specific, detailed plans to guide longer-term recovery efforts.
QUESTIONS
1. In what ways are the Marshall Field’s flood disaster recovery effort a project? Why are large-scale disaster response and recovery efforts projects?
2. In what ways do the characteristics of crisis management as described in this case correspond to those of project management?
3. Who was (were) the project manager(s) and what was his or her (their) responsibility? Who was assigned to the project team and why were they on the team?
4. Comment on the appropriateness of using disaster recovery efforts such as this.
5. What form of project management (basic, program, and so on) does this case most closely resemble?
Case 2 Flexible Benefits System Implementation at Quick Medical Center
The management committee of Quick Medical Center wanted to reduce the cost and improve the value and service of its employee benefits coverage. To accomplish this it decided to procure and implement a new benefits system. The new system would have no meet four goal; improved responsiveness to employee needs, added benefits flexibility, better cost management, and greater coordination of human resource objectives with business strategies. A multifunctional team of 13 members was formed by selecting representatives of departments at Quick that would rely most on the new system—Human Resources (HR), Financial Systems (FS), and Information Services (IS). Representation from each department was important to assuring all departmental needs would be met. The team also included six technical experts from the software consulting firm of Hun and Bar Software (HBS).
…
project part-time. When conflicts arose, the project took priority. Given specific performance requirements and time deadlines, the Quick top management committee made it clear that successful project completion was imperative. The project manager was given authority over functional managers and project team members regarding all project related decisions.
QUESTIONS
1. What form of project management (basic, program, and so on) does this case most closely resemble?
2. The project manager is also the director of FS, only one of the departments that will be affected by the new benefits system. Does this seem like a good idea? What are the pros and cons of her selection?
3. Comment on the team members’ part time assignment to the project and the expectation that they give the project top priority.
4. Much of the success of this project depends on the performance of team members who are not employed by Quick, namely the HBS consultants. They must develop the entire hardware/software benefits system. Why was an outside firm likely chosen for such an important part of the project manager in meeting project goals?
Case 3 Glades County Sanitary District
Glades Country is a region on the Gulf Coast with a population of 600,000. About 90 percent of the population is located in and near the city of Sitkus. The main attractions of the area are its clean, sandy beaches and nearby fishing. Resorts, restaurants, hotels, retailers, and the Sitkus/Glades County economy in general rely on these attractions for tourist dollars.
…
given the limited information, it is okay to advance some logical guesses; if you are not able to answer a question for lack of information, indicate how and where, as a systems analyst, you would get it):
Questions:
1. What is the system? What are its key elements and subsystems? What are the boundaries and how are they determined? What is the environment?
2. Who are the decision makers?
3. What is the problem? Carefully formulate it.
4. Define the overall objective of the water waste management program. Because the program is wide-ranging in scope, you should break this down into several sub- objectives.
5. Define the criteria or measures of performance to be used to determine whether the objectives of the program are being met. Specify several criteria for each sub-objective. As much as possible, the criteria should be quantitative, although some qualitative measures should also be included. How will you know if the criteria that you define are the appropriate ones to use?
6. What are the resources and constraints?
7. Elaborate on the kinds of alternatives and range of solutions to solving the problem.
8. Discuss some techniques that could be used to help evaluate which alternatives are best.
Case 4 West Coast University Medical center
(This is a true story.) West Coast University Medical Center (Pseudonym) is a large university teaching and research hospital with a national reputation for excellence in health care practice, education, and research. Always seeking to sustain that reputation, the senior executive board at the Medical Center (WCMC) decided to install a comprehensive medical diagnostic system. The system would be linked to WCMC’s computer servers and be available to physicians via the computer network. Because every physician’s office at WCMC has a PC, doctors and staff could access the system from these offices as well as from their homes or private-practice offices. By simply clicking icons to access a medical specialty area, then keying in answers to queries about a patient’s symptoms, medical history, and so on, a physician could get a list of diagnostics with associated statistics.
…
. Although it did everything the consultants and software vendors had promised, the few doctors that did access it complained that many of the system “benefits” were irrelevant, and that certain features they desired were lacking.
QUESTIONS:
1. Why was the system a failure?
2. What was the likely cause of its lack of use?
3. What steps or procedures were absent or poorly handled in the project conception phase?
Case 5 X-philes Data Management
Corporation
X-philes Data Management Corporation (XDM) requires assistance in tow large projects it is about to undertake: Agentfox and Mulder. Although the projects are comparable in terms of size, technical requirements, and estimated completion time, they are independent and will have their own project managers and teams. Work for both projects is to be contracted to outside consultants.
Two managers at XDM, one assigned each to Agentfox and Mulder, prepare RFPs and send them to several contractors. The RFP for Agentfox includes a statement of work that specifies system performance and quality requirements, a desired completion deadline, and contract conditions. As an incentive, the contractor will receive a bonus for exceeding minimal quality measures and completing the project early, and will be charged a penalty for poor quality and late completion. The project will be tracked using precise quality measures, and the contractor will have to submit detailed monthly status reports. The REP for Mulder simply includes a statement of the type of work to be done, an expected budget limit, and the desired completion date.
…
because Yrisket has a contract with another customer and will have to start a third project in the near future.
QUESTIONS
1. What do you think will happen?
2. How do you think the crisis facing Yrisket will affect the Mulder project? The Agentfox project?
Case 6 Star-Board Construction/West-Starr Associates
Star-Board Construction (SBC) is the prime contractor for Gargantuan Project, a large skyscraper project in downtown Manhattan. SBC is working directly from drawings received from the architect, West-Starr Associates (WSA). Robert Starr, owner and chief architect of WSA, had designed similar buildings and viewed this one as similar to the others. However, one difference between this building and the others is in its facing, which consists of very large granite slabs—slabs much larger than traditionally used and larger than anything with which either WSA or SBC has had prior experience.
..QUESTION
1. What steps or actions should the architect and contractor have taken before committing to the specifications on the window units and spacing between granite slabs the would have reduced or eliminated this problem?
Early in the morning on April 13, 1992, basements in Chicago’s downtown central business district began to flood. A hole the size of an automobile had developed between the river and an adjacent abandoned tunnel. The tunnel, built in the early 1900s for transporting coal, runs throughout the downtown area. When the tunnel flooded, so did the basements connected to it, some 272 in all, including that of major retailer Marshall Field’s.
…
This case illustrates crisis management, an important aspect of which is having a team that moves fast to minimize losses and quickly recover damages. At the beginning of a disaster there is little time to plan, though companies and public agencies often have crisis guidelines for responding to emergency situations. Afterwards they then develop more specific, detailed plans to guide longer-term recovery efforts.
QUESTIONS
1. In what ways are the Marshall Field’s flood disaster recovery effort a project? Why are large-scale disaster response and recovery efforts projects?
2. In what ways do the characteristics of crisis management as described in this case correspond to those of project management?
3. Who was (were) the project manager(s) and what was his or her (their) responsibility? Who was assigned to the project team and why were they on the team?
4. Comment on the appropriateness of using disaster recovery efforts such as this.
5. What form of project management (basic, program, and so on) does this case most closely resemble?
Case 2 Flexible Benefits System Implementation at Quick Medical Center
The management committee of Quick Medical Center wanted to reduce the cost and improve the value and service of its employee benefits coverage. To accomplish this it decided to procure and implement a new benefits system. The new system would have no meet four goal; improved responsiveness to employee needs, added benefits flexibility, better cost management, and greater coordination of human resource objectives with business strategies. A multifunctional team of 13 members was formed by selecting representatives of departments at Quick that would rely most on the new system—Human Resources (HR), Financial Systems (FS), and Information Services (IS). Representation from each department was important to assuring all departmental needs would be met. The team also included six technical experts from the software consulting firm of Hun and Bar Software (HBS).
…
project part-time. When conflicts arose, the project took priority. Given specific performance requirements and time deadlines, the Quick top management committee made it clear that successful project completion was imperative. The project manager was given authority over functional managers and project team members regarding all project related decisions.
QUESTIONS
1. What form of project management (basic, program, and so on) does this case most closely resemble?
2. The project manager is also the director of FS, only one of the departments that will be affected by the new benefits system. Does this seem like a good idea? What are the pros and cons of her selection?
3. Comment on the team members’ part time assignment to the project and the expectation that they give the project top priority.
4. Much of the success of this project depends on the performance of team members who are not employed by Quick, namely the HBS consultants. They must develop the entire hardware/software benefits system. Why was an outside firm likely chosen for such an important part of the project manager in meeting project goals?
Case 3 Glades County Sanitary District
Glades Country is a region on the Gulf Coast with a population of 600,000. About 90 percent of the population is located in and near the city of Sitkus. The main attractions of the area are its clean, sandy beaches and nearby fishing. Resorts, restaurants, hotels, retailers, and the Sitkus/Glades County economy in general rely on these attractions for tourist dollars.
…
given the limited information, it is okay to advance some logical guesses; if you are not able to answer a question for lack of information, indicate how and where, as a systems analyst, you would get it):
Questions:
1. What is the system? What are its key elements and subsystems? What are the boundaries and how are they determined? What is the environment?
2. Who are the decision makers?
3. What is the problem? Carefully formulate it.
4. Define the overall objective of the water waste management program. Because the program is wide-ranging in scope, you should break this down into several sub- objectives.
5. Define the criteria or measures of performance to be used to determine whether the objectives of the program are being met. Specify several criteria for each sub-objective. As much as possible, the criteria should be quantitative, although some qualitative measures should also be included. How will you know if the criteria that you define are the appropriate ones to use?
6. What are the resources and constraints?
7. Elaborate on the kinds of alternatives and range of solutions to solving the problem.
8. Discuss some techniques that could be used to help evaluate which alternatives are best.
Case 4 West Coast University Medical center
(This is a true story.) West Coast University Medical Center (Pseudonym) is a large university teaching and research hospital with a national reputation for excellence in health care practice, education, and research. Always seeking to sustain that reputation, the senior executive board at the Medical Center (WCMC) decided to install a comprehensive medical diagnostic system. The system would be linked to WCMC’s computer servers and be available to physicians via the computer network. Because every physician’s office at WCMC has a PC, doctors and staff could access the system from these offices as well as from their homes or private-practice offices. By simply clicking icons to access a medical specialty area, then keying in answers to queries about a patient’s symptoms, medical history, and so on, a physician could get a list of diagnostics with associated statistics.
…
. Although it did everything the consultants and software vendors had promised, the few doctors that did access it complained that many of the system “benefits” were irrelevant, and that certain features they desired were lacking.
QUESTIONS:
1. Why was the system a failure?
2. What was the likely cause of its lack of use?
3. What steps or procedures were absent or poorly handled in the project conception phase?
Case 5 X-philes Data Management
Corporation
X-philes Data Management Corporation (XDM) requires assistance in tow large projects it is about to undertake: Agentfox and Mulder. Although the projects are comparable in terms of size, technical requirements, and estimated completion time, they are independent and will have their own project managers and teams. Work for both projects is to be contracted to outside consultants.
Two managers at XDM, one assigned each to Agentfox and Mulder, prepare RFPs and send them to several contractors. The RFP for Agentfox includes a statement of work that specifies system performance and quality requirements, a desired completion deadline, and contract conditions. As an incentive, the contractor will receive a bonus for exceeding minimal quality measures and completing the project early, and will be charged a penalty for poor quality and late completion. The project will be tracked using precise quality measures, and the contractor will have to submit detailed monthly status reports. The REP for Mulder simply includes a statement of the type of work to be done, an expected budget limit, and the desired completion date.
…
because Yrisket has a contract with another customer and will have to start a third project in the near future.
QUESTIONS
1. What do you think will happen?
2. How do you think the crisis facing Yrisket will affect the Mulder project? The Agentfox project?
Case 6 Star-Board Construction/West-Starr Associates
Star-Board Construction (SBC) is the prime contractor for Gargantuan Project, a large skyscraper project in downtown Manhattan. SBC is working directly from drawings received from the architect, West-Starr Associates (WSA). Robert Starr, owner and chief architect of WSA, had designed similar buildings and viewed this one as similar to the others. However, one difference between this building and the others is in its facing, which consists of very large granite slabs—slabs much larger than traditionally used and larger than anything with which either WSA or SBC has had prior experience.
..QUESTION
1. What steps or actions should the architect and contractor have taken before committing to the specifications on the window units and spacing between granite slabs the would have reduced or eliminated this problem?
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