Case Study III-1 Managing a Systems Development Project at Consumer and Industrial Products, Inc.
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Teaching Note on Case Study III-1
Managing a Systems Development Project at
Consumer and Industrial Products, Inc.
Objectives
The objective of this case study is to help the student understand the systems development life
cycle (SDLC) development process and the roles of the various participants in this process.
Overview
This case depicts a large systems development project in rather substantial detail. The PAS
perspectives and responsibilities of the sponsoring manager and the project manager (called the
project director) are emphasized. (See questions 1 and 3 in the next section.)
Questions for Discussion
Depending on what you wish your students to learn from this case, some of the following
questions may be helpful to guide and stimulate discussion.
1.
Anderson was the executive sponsor of the PAS system and several other interrelated systems
that were being developed at the same time, and in this role he performed a number of critical
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2.
Shaw was the user project manager. He managed the participation of disbursements department
3.
Watkins was called the project director, but she was really the project manager. She was directly
responsible for managing the IS people on the project, but she felt that she was personally
accountable for the success of the project. She was responsible for managing the development
process using the Stradis methodology.
department to overcome the effects of the historic antipathy between IS and the users. Watkins
worked very hard to establish trust between IS and her clients through being very open about the
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4. Describe the role of the project steering group.
The steering group, chaired by Anderson, was composed of the three accounts payable
supervisors whose areas were affected by the project, Shaw, and the manager of the
5. Discuss the role of IS management in the PAS project.
Henry Carter, IS supervisor of disbursements systems, was responsible for all of the systems
being developed for the disbursement department. He allocated IS staff to the various projects
and was supposed to be managing the directors of these projects.
6. Describe the role of the Stradis methodology in the PAS project. Discuss the advantages
and disadvantages of the use of the Stradis methodology in this project.
Stradis is a structured development methodology that was used for the PAS project. It divides the
development into eight phases: initial study, detailed study, draft requirements study, outline
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7. Discuss the major problems that arose in this development project and describe how
Anderson should deal with them.
The major problem revealed in this case was the incompetence of the IS management involved, as
noted in the answer to question 5. Although Anderson had his own IS group, he knew that it was
not capable of handling the large projects that were involved in the reengineering of the