This case study uses an information technology (IT) project for public schools in North Carolina as the basis for a discussion of the consequences when IT projects get off-track and how those same projects can be recovered.

Read the case study. For this assignment, you do NOT have to read the Appendix, but you may want to read the information provided there at some later time. Of particular interest may be the discussion of the use of the Delphi method to arrive at conclusions/recommendations. The Delphi method is also useful in developing cost estimates for large/complex projects. executive summary document, discussing what you found to be the most interesting and/or significant idea discussed in the case. Your executive summary should be no less than one (1) page and not more than two (2) pages

orth Carolina's State Superintendent is currently trying to clean V up a messy situation. In 1999, his department launched a project to implement a statewide student information system, North Carolina's Windows of Information on Student Education (NC WISE). The project aims to provide comprehensive student management and reporting functionality to 80,000 teachers and administrators in 117 school dis- tricts and 100 charter schools. The original contract for the project had a price tag of $54 million and specified that all users would get access to the new system by the end of 2004. Because of numerous project snags and delays, the depart- ment had to renegotiate the contract with the vendor. After having spent $35 million and four years on the project, the Superintendent signed a new contact for another $78 million last year. The new contract pushed the completion date to 2009 and the total price tag to over $113 million. Today, just six districts are connected to the system and the department recently announced that the final tab for the system is likely to exceed $150 million. Things have gotten so bad that some of the users have renamed the system NC STUPID.' Unfortunately, NC's State Superintendent is not alone in battling informa- tion technology (IT) project woes. In fact, business executives who are charged with the supervision of IT projects are more likely to find themselves in situa- tions that will require them to clean up after their troubled projects rather thanTABLE A2. Post-Survey Evaluation Average Standard Ratings (out of 9) Deviation Satisfaction with Results 7100 1.49 Learning from Others' Feedback 5.94 1.53 Ability to Express Ideas Comfortably 7.61 109 Note: The above indicators were assessed using a 9-point likert type scale. The primary goal of our study was to identify a comprehensive, validated set of important remedial actions. Our objective was to separate the important actions from the unimportant ones (without placing too much emphasis on the individual, distance-based ranking of each item). In essence, round 3 of our study corresponds to a second round of phase 2, as described in Schmidt. Round 3: Validation of Important Tactics-The round 3 instrument included the descriptions of the recommendations and summaries of the comments from round 2. Each questionnaire was customized for each participant; it provided the participant's own individual round 2 rating and the group's average rating for each recommendation. The participants were asked to consider revising their initial ratings (based on the new comments and the group's average ratings) and were invited to provide additional com- ments. Thirty-two (84 percent) of the participants responded.* Overall, it appears that the above multi-round approach enabled the par- ticipants to articulate their recommendations and to reach agreement regarding their importance. Table A2 depicts the results of a post-survey evaluation of the process that was completed by the participants. The results suggest that the experts were satisfied with the results and found the feedback process to be both appropriate for expressing their opinions and valuable in terms of learning. In terms of agreement, the average standard deviation for a recommenda- tion in round 2 was 2.2; this was reduced to 1.6 in round 3. Although this indi- cates that consensus was still increasing at round 3, we decided to conclude the study upon the completion of round 3 for two reasons. Firstly, there was clear indication that there was no drastic movement of items between the top and bottom of the list (between rounds 2 and 3), indicating that the experts' opin- ions converged regarding the categorization of the items as important (and unimportant). To statistically evaluate the level of agreement among the parti- cipants in round 3, their ratings were transformed into rankings. A statistical analysis, using Kendall's coefficient of Concordance (W), indicated that the level of consensus was moderate (W=.360) and statistically significant (x? = 345, p<.001 secondly following schmidt advice we concluded that the poten- tial improvement by having additional rounds more refined individual item rankings could not justify burden such would have placed on our busy panelists>