Jackson Insurance and Title CompanyMark Suturana joined the Jackson Company 6 months ago. He is an experienced management information systems executive, who has been given the task of improving the responsiveness of Jackson’s data processing group to the end user. After several months of investigation, Mark felt certain he understood the current situation clearly enough to proceed. First, approximately 90 percent of all end-user requests came to data processing (DP) in the form of a project, with the DP output either the final product of the project, or, more commonly, one step of a project. Ac-cordingly, Mark felt he should initially direct his efforts toward integrating DP’s approach to projects with the company’s formal project management system.It has been Mark’s experience that most problems associated with DP projects revolve around poor project definition and inadequate participation by the end user during the system design phase. Typically, the end user does not become heavily involved in the project until the new system is ready to install.At that point, a great deal of work is required to adapt the system to meet end-user requirements. Mark decided to institute a procedure that put end-user cooperation and participation on the front end of the project. The idea was to define the objective and design of the system so thoroughly that implementation would become almost mechanical in nature rather than an introduction to the end user of
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