Eastern Electric is a large supplier of Electric power to a region extending from Cambridge up to Hull. It has a large systems development department at its corporate headquarters in Ipswich. Some 250 staff work on the delivery and support of primarily mainframe systems to cover all business areas. This includes billing, engineering, sales, debt recovery, and payroll and personnel systems.

The Billing system, running under MVS on Amdahl machines, was an IMS system dating from 1974. A replacement system has been authorised which will be based on a DB2 relational database. This system will incorporate the original functions, but will add new functionality as part of a move towards a corporate customer database in which all aspects of the service to customers will be incorporated 'under one roof'. Analysis has been in progress for 15 months and design and programming has been in progress for 6 months. There is a large team of some 55 programmers, split into sections working on different parts of the system. Teams are working on Customer Services, Metering, Payments and Sales. Each team has three analysts.

Delivery of the phased system was expected to commence with customer services a month ago, but this has yet to appear and the managers are unable to give a revised date. Teams of programmers have been moved onto customer services in an effort to get this back on time. This has resulted in payment and sales having no programmers, only analysts and user liaison staff. The Customer services phase must go live in four weeks since the users are waiting for it and cannot move with the new style of billing until there is a customer database to work with.

People consider that the problems began when the overall project manager left two months ago. He was not replaced as such. A senior analyst was promoted to lead the customer services project. He is struggling because he is unable to control the timing of the projects and to raise morale. He has taken to demanding that staff put in substantial overtime and moving from one office to the next, looking at what programming is being done and demanding that it is done faster. Original quality checks have been curtailed and time budgeted in each program for a inspection has been removed. Programmers are now expected to swap programs and study them without extra time being given for such quality checks. Furthermore the analysts are too busy correcting the database structure and working on a backlog of program specifications to be involved with quality inspections. The analysts mostly come from the business side and have been trained in-house in structured analysis and relational databases. They do not understand the technical aspects of DB2 or how to program.

Another analyst was appointed to lead the Metering, payment and Sales projects. He has been absent due to suffering a spate of robberies at his home and suffering from fairly continuous migraines.

Staff turnover over the last 15 months has been in the 70% mark. Most of the programmers are contractors. Many of the staff programmers have left to do contracting. One contractor was recently sacked for blatantly recruiting two staff programmers to his contracting agency. At least two staff programmers are now working on the same project in the role of contractors. This has reduced morale amongst the remaining staff programmers. Some are actively seeking jobs elsewhere. There is also a feeling that the management is failing them and does not understand the programming problems. Attempts by two programmers to complain about the lack of quality control have met with a brick wall. They sent a letter to the director of IT which was returned to the project manager who suggested that the letter had damaged any promotion prospects they might have had, and they should knuckle down to make sure they got their programs out on time and to budget.

While some contractors are doing their best to get the programs running, and are prepared to revise programs, to talk to user liaison and to carry out some analytical work, thus relieving some of the pressure on the analysts, one contractor refuses to do anything except program exactly what is on the spec. and in a particular way he is used to. He has not been willing to co-operate with the analysts and demands that any amendments are accompanied by a full new specification and an estimation of the time it will take. Furthermore, there are at least two contractors ( if not more) who do not know DB2 and are learning it as they go along. We know of two because they have expressed the fact that they don't know DB2 and are seeking help. Others are hiding behind experts and hoping no one will notice.

Only one of the senior programmers has a full grasp of the project. The turnover is so high that only he and one other were here when the project started. Only he has a full knowledge of the previous system it was replacing and is able to convert between IMS and DB2. It was he who set the standards and wrote most of the skeleton programs that are now used in all the online system and some of the batch functions. A month and a half ago, he was considering another job offer. However, while still working as a senior programmer, he is now retained on a salary that is at the level of a senior manager. He is currently having an affair with a senior analyst that has resulted in a breakdown of his marriage and his moving into bed and breakfast accommodation in Ipswich.

User liaison officers are aware that things are not as they should be. Besides the undercurrents of dissatisfaction, they get programmers complaining to them about the shoddy work of the analysts. Rumours abound about the fate of the sales and billing project manager and there is general scorn and disrespect for the new project manager of customer services. Things have come to a height with the disappearance of a whole series of corrections to a major batch background module that the user liaison has spent a considerable time testing. The manager of user liaison has had a meeting with the director of customer services to express concern. She thinks the customer services phase will not be ready in a month's time. It is likely to collapse around their heads due to shoddy workmanship. This will leave the director of customer services with 50 idle clerks at a key time in the annual business cycle.

List the human resource problems that the billing project has.

How has it got itself in such a state?

How might the situation have been avoided?

What action should the director of customer services take?

How can staff morale be restored?

Explain how the use of contractors can be controlled.

How could the project be managed so that quality assurance is not squeezed out in the face of time pressures?

Is there a case for dividing systems development into two distinct and separate functions: Analysis and Programming, or should we always employ analyst/programmers?

Outline some guidelines for a human resources policy for the IT department at Eastern Electric.

Can the billing project be rescued?