Jackson Insurance and Title Company

Mark Suturana joined the Jackson Company six months ago. He is an experienced management information sytems executive who has been given the task of improving the responsiveness of Jackson's data processing group to the end user. After several months of investigation, Mark felt certain he understood the current situation clearly enough to proceed. First, approximately 90 percent of all end user requests came to data processing (DP) in the form of a project, with the DP output either the ?nal product of the project, or, more commonly, one step of a project.

Accordingly, Mark felt he should initially direct his efforts toward integrating DP's approach to projects with the company's formal project management system. It has been Mark's experience that most problems associated with DP projects revolve around poor project de?nition and inadequate participation by the end user during the system design phase. Typically, the end user does not become heavily involved in the project until the new system is ready to install. At that point, a great deal of work is required to adapt the system to meet end-user requirements. Mark decided to institute a procedure that put end-user cooperation and participation on the front end of the project. The idea was to de?ne the objective and design of the system so thoroughly that implementation would become almost mechanical in nature rather than an introduction to the end user of "his or her new system."

Mark also recognized that something had to be done to control the programming quality of DP's output. A more effective front-end approach to DP projects would subject DP managers to more intense pressure to produce results within user's needs, including time constraints. Mark was concerned that the quality of the DP output would deteriorate under those conditions, especially given the lack of technical expertise on the part of end users and outside project managers. To solve this problem, Mark recommended the creation of a DP quality assurance (QA) manager who would approve the initial steps of the projects and review each additional step. The QA manager would have the authority to declare any step or portion of the output inadequate and to send it back to be reworked.

Questions: Is this a good control system for DP? Why or why not? Does it also represent a good control point for company projects using DP to accomplish one portion of the project objective? What would be your answer if you were a non-DP project manager? Might scope creep become a problem under this new system? If so, how should mark control it?