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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 – 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 ‘format agnostic’ in that they do not care much what sort of container—such as a book, journal, BLOG or a Web page—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...