Project Management and Analysis (MBA 721)
Group Assignment I. Case Analysis (Group 7)
Case 07: Lavasoft.com
Lavasoft Company, a web site development firm, is developing new site software for one of its corporate clients. The project starts out well. Lavasoft staffers meet frequently with client representatives to produce a document of clearly stated client needs and requirements. There is no question about what the client needs; however, members of the Lavasoft development team disagree about the kind of system that would best satisfy these needs. The project manager, Mary West, is concerned about the time this project will take. She feels that the kind of system that would best satisfy the user needs is more or less obvious, and she asks a few people on the team to help her create some bullet points and general flowcharts to address the requirements. She also creates a project schedule.
She then presents the charts and schedule to the rest of the development team and says that anyone is free to question her about them. Some people are concerned that the approach as stated by the bullet points and the high-level charts are too vague. Mary assures them that the vagueness will be worked out as details of the system are defined.
A team of designers is selected to perform the detailed design and development work. To speed up decision making and reduce outside interference, the team’s size is kept small and relatively isolated from other development teams in the company. Daily the team is forced to interpret the bullet points and high level charts and to make design decisions. Whenever there is disagreement about what should be done, which is frequent, Mary makes the decision.
The design team produces the detailed system specifications on time according to the schedule, so the project is considered in good shape. However, upon looking at the specifications, some reviewers