CASE STUDY $13\mathrm{.}1$ The IT Department at Kimble College As part of the effort to upgrade the IT capabilities at At board meetings, he routinely gives a rosy picture Kimble College, the institution initiated a program of his performance but seems incapable of answer$-$ more than five years ago to dramatically increase the ing simple questions about project delivery beyond size of the IT department while focusing efforts toward vague declarations that "things are moving along data management and improving administrative func$-$ just fine." In the president's view, Dan's depart tions. As part of the upgrade, Kimble hired a new vice mental track record is not warranting the additional president of information systems, Dan Gray, and gave funding he keeps requesting for new equipment and him wide latitude in identifying problems and initiat$-$ personnel ing projects that would result in improving the IT sys tem campuswide. Dan also was given the final power consultant, to assess the performance of Dan's to determine the development of new projects, which department and, in particular, the manner in which allowed him to field requests from the various college it runs and monitors the development of its project departments, determine which needs were most press$-$ portfolio. Your initial assessment has confirmed the ing, and create a portfolio of prioritized projects. Within college president's hunch: The ongoing status of two years of his arrival at Kimble, Dan was overseeing projects in the IT department is not clearly under$-$ an IT department of $46$ people, divided into four levels: stood. Everyone is working hard, but no one can $(1)$ help desk support, $(2)$ junior programmers, $(3)$ se$-$ provide clear answers about how the projects being nior programmers, and $(4)$ project team leaders. There developed are doing. After asking several project were only four project team leaders, with the majority leaders about the status of their projects and repeat$-$ of Dan's staff working either at the entry$-$level help edly receiving $"$Oh$,$ fine" as a response, you realize desk or as junior programmers In the past three years, the performance of know from day to day how their projects are pro$-$ Dan's department has been mixed. Although it has gressing. When you ask them how they determine been responsible for taking on a number of new proj$-$ project status, the general consensus is that unless ects, its track record for delivery is shaky; for exam$-$ the project team leaders hear bad news, they assume ple, well over half of the new projects have run past everything is going fine. Furthermore, it is clear that their budgets and initial schedules, sometimes by even if they wanted to spend more time monitoring more than $100\%.$ Worse, from the college president's their ongoing projects, they are not sure what types perspective, it does not appear that Dan has a clear of information they should collect to develop better sense of the status of the projects in his department. on$-$time project tracking and control. You have been called in$,$ as an independent that they are not being evasive; they simply do not $($continued$)$Questions to collect in order to assess the status of their projects? $3.$ How would you blend "hard data" and "mana$-$ gerial or behavioral" information to create a com prehensive view of the status of ongoing projects in the IT department at Kimble College? $1.$ As a consultant monitoring this problem, what so$-$ lutions will you propose? To what degree has Dan's management style contributed to the problems? $2.$ What are some types of project status information you could suggest the project team leaders begin