Leadership

Running head: PROBLEM SOLUTION: HARRISON-KEYES, INC.

Problem Solution: Harrison-Keyes, Inc.

Problem Solution: Harrison-Keyes Inc.

“The important thing in a military operation is victory, not persistence” (Cleary and Tzu, 1988, p. 30). This quote, issued by Sun Tzu more than 2,000 years ago, defines the problem at Harrison-Keyes. This 100-year-old firm is in trouble and has decided to change its direction without following the basic steps of project implementation, including:

1. Develop a project management plan вЂ" including work-breakdown structure, network plan, baseline plan, budget, and completion criteria

2. Get agreement from all stakeholders.

3. Evaluate possible risks to the project and establish contingency plans to reduce these risks.

These, and other items in an implementation plan, are not new. The best practices for these have been developed over the last 40 years through hundreds of IT development projects.

Harrison-Keyes must get this project under control. There is no alternative to this. The following paper delves into this project and where it has gone wrong. In addition, it performs an analysis of options to resolve the issues and make the project successful.

Describe the Situation

Issue and Opportunity Identification

The publishing world is changing. The marketing staff of OCLC states, “More than ever, content consumers are вЂ?format agnostic’ in that they do not care much what sort of containerвЂ"such as a book, journal, BLOG or a Web pageвЂ"the content comes from. Commercial content deployers are increasingly catering to these more experimental information consumers, providing content in a variety of formats, often with different cost structures related as much to its consumption as to the content itself,” (OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc., 2005).

Meg P. McGill - the chief executive officer (CEO) of the firm - after looking at the profit trends for the last few years and at overall publishing trends, observed that printed-technology books were declining in sales and that electronic books (e-books) were increasing in numbers. She and her staff put together a strategic plan to develop an e-book publishing capability and were able to get the approval of the board of directors to implement their strategy. Unfortunately, the strategic plan was looked at as being a project-management plan, and basic steps were not taken to ensure that the project would succeed.

The project, after almost a year of effort, is behind schedule and over budget. McGill was fired as CEO and William Guardo was hired to replace her. He is faced with the following issues that must be resolved. Based upon their resolution, he has to decide whether to continue this project or cancel it.

1. Risk management вЂ" Guardo’s first issue is to develop a risk-management plan. The need for this is evidenced by the firm’s necessity to find a way to digitize books after a flood wiped out the business of the only digitizer вЂ" Asia Digital Publishing вЂ" with which Harrison-Keys had established relations. He needs much more than just another digitizer; he needs a complete risk-management analysis performed for the entire project before he continues.

2. Organizational politics - Meg McGill, as a proponent of electronic container presentment, allowed the technology side of Harrison-Keyes to control the project вЂ" to the point this group has alienated the rest of the staff. It did not perform due diligence in managing this project and as a result has almost destroyed it. It was allowed to do so because of their position with McGill. Under William Guardo, all political gamesmanship has to end.

3. Development best practices вЂ" Jan Peters, head of the implementation team, and Mack Evans, chief information officer (CIO), must devise a formal project management plan. This type of plan is not new вЂ" IT development projects have been going on for more than 50 years. Over the duration of development projects, a large number of best practices for successful completion of a project has been compiled. The team at Harrison-Keyes needs to implement these practices.

4. Organizational culture вЂ" Organizations require a defined culture and without it, chaos will exist, (Gray-Larson, 2005, P. 74). The state of chaos best describes the organizational culture at Harrison-Keyes. The company must develop a common culture.

5. Project monitoring вЂ" This project, and all future ones, call for development of formal monitoring tools to prevent the present hysteria from ever reoccurring.

6. Project duration вЂ" An essential issue that must be addressed is the duration of the e-book project. This has been under way some months and is not near closure. The e-book-presentment project is time dependent; the first organizations to develop and mass-market e-books will have an advantage over latecomers.

7. Project closure вЂ" As quoted in this paper’s opening, victory (also known as closure) is essential. There are no points given for persistence. The firm that successfully produces e-books first will be the market leader. The firm that does a “good job” but never finishes will be left aside.

Stakeholder Perspectives/Ethical Dilemmas

A number of stakeholders are involved in this scenario. Although all seem to have valid perspectives, their viewpoints do not necessarily conform. This disagreement leads toward a number of significant ethical dilemmas:

1. The owners, as represented by the board of directors, versus the authors under contract to Harrison-Keyes вЂ" The owners and the board are interested in maintaining the viability of Harrison-Keyes, Inc. The owners desire the firm to remain profitable as their income is based upon this. Over the previous year this group has witnessed a significant expenditure of human and financial resources, while not seeing the expected return on investment (ROI) from this expenditure. The authors also are concerned with maintaining their incomes. They see digitization of books as a way for a single copy of the book to be disseminated multiple times, thereby reducing sales and royalties. The authors want digital-rights management included in the e-book