Crosby Manufacturing Corporation (Chapter 12, pp. 552 - 554)
Case Study Questions:
1. Livingston made some mistakes initially. Describe at least two of them and
provide how you would handle the situations.
Answer – The first mistake made by Livingston was that he was approaching a very strategic
and long term project as a very reactionary and urgent manner. Given that the project is very
important to the company being competitive, there should have been better planning in arriving
at the decision on how they are going to implement the project. Even in the current context, they
should not hurry up to implement the project but think and plan on what they want to do, and
only then decide upon the implementation. The second mistake that I can see if that he is
rushing into starting the project and is putting pressure on stakeholders to accept unrealistic
goals, without proper estimation or validation, that could lead to incorrect estimations and
subsequently failure of the project. I would include qualified personnel such as an experienced
project manager and architect to study the project requirements in detail to come up with an
estimate that would be then used as a basis for discussion in the meeting that was held for
starting the project.
2. How do you think the functional employees feel? Support how you might feel if
you were in their position by citing points from the case study?
Answer – Both the functional employees, the MIS Manager and the EDP manager feel that they
are being rushed into the project, and they feel more planning and preparation is needed before
the project is undertaken. The statements made by these two stakeholders - "I guess the first
step in the design, development, and implementation process would be the feasibility study" and
"This cannot be helped. However, I have prepared a typical (abbreviated) schedule of my own"
show that they are somewhat skeptical of the ambitious and aggressive implementation goals,
and they feel that there should be a more structured and logical approach and many other
things considered before the company starts implementing the project.
3. Are there any other alternatives? Explain at least three alternatives.
Answer – In terms of alternatives that would help the company to better achieve their goals of
faster and high quality implementation of the project, they can consider –
1) Buying a software package that meets most of their requirements and customizing the
software
2) Outsourcing the design and development to an IT company that can do it faster and better
3) Developing the project in a phased manner, where the most important requirements are
developed first and then the other requirements
4. Explain your thoughts about the appointment of Tim Emary as project manager.
Consider what is expected of a project manager and senior managers’ support for
projects.
Answer – In my opinion, Tim Emary has been appointed as the project manager, and this
decision has some good and bad aspects to it. For instance, as he is very good in planning,
scheduling and management, he would be able to contribute in getting the project completed in
an effective manner. Also, given that Livingston has assured of his support and commitment to
the project and to Tim, he would get the required top management and functional management
commitment that is key to project success.
However, as he is not well versed in IT, he may not be able to communicate and also
understand the intricacies of an IT project that would lead to issues. There might be instances
where he would need to make decisions related to technology or explain and communicate to
the team members and his lack of IT knowledge would make him seem bad before the team
who would expect him to know these things. Also, as the decision to appointment was abrupt
and did not follow the usual protocol, there might be some resistance, non cooperation and lack
of support from the teams as they had not been involved in the decision.
5. How long do you think it should take to develop a detailed project schedule and
why?
Answer – For a project like the MCCS development being discussed in the case, there needs to
be a lot of information gathered, lot of people interviewed, analysis of information and creation
of a detailed WBS and then getting it reviewed by an experienced person all of which would
take good amount of time to arrive at a accurate schedule. In my opinion, if a detailed schedule
and plan is required with the above activities, it would take about one to two weeks.
6. Is a completion date in as short as 18 months realistic? Why or why not? Analyze
this question using the information from Exhibit 12-2 (Typical schedule in
months).
Answer – From the typical schedule, we can see that the normal time for completion is about
22 months and the crash time to complete is 15 months. Based on this information alone, we
can say that if the entire project is executed on a crash mode, then it can be competed within 18
months. However, given that the project is at a very early stage of design, the requirements are
unclear and the functional mangers have suggested that there needs to be further analysis
before implementation, it can be said that the completion date is very aggressive and the
company should increase that so that expectations and goals of the project are realistic.
7. Explain what other areas may suffer as time constraints increase.
Answer – As time constraints increase, there could be a direct impact on project quality as the
team would do things fast or not do proper testing due to which the project may be released with
a lot of bugs. Also, there could also be an impact on project scope as there would probably be a
trade off in relation to the functionality and the time it would take to develop them, due to which
a product with lesser functionality may be developed. There may also be issues with future
maintainability of the system as there may be compromises on design or documentation that
would lead to issues that would be difficult to solve should they arise in the future.