Please answer the questions
CASE STUDY 13.1 The I'l' Department at Kimble College As part of the effort to upgrade the IT capabilities at Kimble College, the institution initiated a program more than ve years ago to dramatically increase the size of the IT department while focusing efforts toward data management and improving administrative func- tions. As part of the upgrade, Kimble hired a new vice president of information systems, Dan Gray, and gave him wide latitude in identifying problems and initiat- ing projects that would result in improving the IT sys- tem campuswide. Dan also was given the nal power to determine the development of new projects, which allowed him to field requests from the various college departments, determine which needs were most press ing, and create a portfolio of prioritized projects. Within two years of his arrival at Kimble, Dan was overseeing an IT department of 46 people, divided into four levels: (1) help desk support, (2) junior programmers, (3) se- nior programmers, and (4) project team leaders. There were only four project team leaders, with the majority at Dan's staff working either at the entry-level help desk or as junior programmers. In the past three years, the performance of Dan's department has been mixed. Although it has been responsible for taking on a number of new proj- ects, its track record for delivery is shaky; for exam- ple, well over half of the new projects have run past their budgets and initial schedules, sometimes by more than 100%. Worse, from the college president's perspective, it does not appear that Dan has a clear sense of the status of the projects in his department- Questions I. 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 At board meetings, he routinely gives a rosy picture of his performance but seems incapable of answer- ing simple questions about project delivery beyond vague declarations that \"things are moving along just fine." In the president's view, Dan's depart- mental track record is not warranting the additional funding he keeps requesting for new equipment and personnel. You have been called in, as an independent consultant, to assess the performance of Dan's department and, in particular, the manner in which it runs and monitors the development of its project portfolio. Your initial assessment has conrmed the college president's hunch: The ongoing status of projects in the TT department is not clearly under- stood. Everyone is working hard, but no one can provide clear answers about how the projects being developed are doing. After asking several project leaders about the status of their projects and repeat- edly receiving \"Oh, fine\" as a response, you realize that they are not being evasive; they simply do not know from day to day how their projects are pro- gressing. When you ask them how they determine project status, the general consensus is that unless the project team leaders hear bad news, they assume everything is going fine- Furthermore, it is clear that even if they wanted to spend more time monitoring their ongoing projects, they are not sure what types of information they should collect to develop better on-time project tracking and control. (continued) to collect in order to assess the status of their Proiects? 3. How would you blend "hard data\" and \"mana- gerial or behavioral\" information to create a cone prehensive view of the status of ongoing projects in the 11' department at Kimble College
