Apply the UCP method to the "Garden Gnomes" problem. Comment on the results.

GARDEN GNOMES ***[print]***

"Garden gnomes" is a company that imports and distributes garden features. In February, the supervisor of the marketing department came to the conclusion that the now three year old company website maintained on the local IPS server is out of date. He is very enthusiastic and a fan of new technologies. Given that the e-business became very popular in the country he convinced the company's Board to modify the website.

It is worth mentioning the basic regulations of the company and the rational of its presence in the market. Garden Gnomes neither produces nor stores its own products. The company depends on suppliers; producers of garden figures known worldwide. Thus marketing does not promote the products. This is done by polish companies. However, the department is expanding in the market by improving transport, by improving the company's image, by promoting itself etc. The clients of the company are warehouses and the market network. The sales can be carried out in any style and by any method as long as the sales bring profit.

The person responsible for computing services in the company - an employee of the administrative department that maintains the financial services - was invited to have a meeting with the Board. At the meeting he was told to change the existing website and to prepare a presentation for the following day providing an estimate of the time and cost required for the creation of a new site. At the conclusion of the meeting the President reminded everyone that in four months all partners would meet and he would like to impress them by showing his modern approach to company management; Thus, the website should be ready before the meeting.

The Computing Services employee together with his coworkers - a young student working part-time and creating graphics for the webpage and a programmer (Linux fan) fluent in html began to analyze the task as requested by the Board.

It was nice to realize that the Board is interested in modernizing the company's image and the website. The sales department consisting of thirty five employees was also happy about the planned changes. The sales department supervisor is considering sales on-line. He expects that costs would decrease as the large number of customers would be served faster given computerized ordering and purchase processing.

However, in the opinion of the financial services supervisor selling on-line will complicate the duties of his/her department since new forms and documents would be introduced. Moreover, he expects difficulties in interpreting such specific concepts as "purchase order acquisition", etc.

It is common knowledge that the financial services supervisor and the marketing department supervisor are competing for appointment to the Vice-President position that will be announced at the next General Meeting of partners. Finally, the sales department was chosen to be the project sponsor. The primary goal for the project is to provide tools for sales on-line. Creating a new image of the company by designing new graphics and websites will accompany the primary goal.