Managing Change at Seahawk Books
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School
University of North Carolina, Wilmington *
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Course
577
Subject
Information Systems
Date
Dec 6, 2023
Type
docx
Pages
2
Uploaded by ChancellorWolfPerson947
Mini-Case Study: Managing Change at Seahawk Books
Publishing
Seahawk Books Publishing
is producing customized eBooks for UNCW. It has just received a
large order for a new eBook on
Strategic Human Resource Management in a Global Context
from a senior professor in the business school. This distinguished faculty member is dissatisfied
with the current textbooks and wants a customized eBook for use with her on- campus courses,
graduate seminars, and her executive education courses. This is the most complex eBook that
Seahawk Books has undertaken. Because this project is so important to the professor and will
be used in so many different settings with different schedules, the professor made sure that she
had her complete eBook request in early to allow sufficient time for production. She had
selected a broad set of the best papers and had written an introduction and background, along
with discussion questions for each section. This meant that this project was going to have an
extensive set of permissions to acquire before production could happen, as well as a large
amount of desktop publishing for the new materials written by the professor.
She was quite certain that she had given Seahawk Books more than enough time to have her
eBook ready before the first class needed it.
This large eBook went through the check and verify order step with a bit of back and forth with
the professor to verify the information needed for the extensive number of permissions, so that
started the project off with a bit of a delay. Because there were so many permissions, the
Supervisor who planned this project, accelerated the work on obtaining permissions to make
sure that all the permissions were received before they needed to start assembling and collating
the eBook in production.
As the Publishers Liaison worked through the extensive list of permissions, the Customer
Service Representative for the business school at the college started receiving several inputs
from the college about this project. One set of inputs was a continuing series of requests from
the professor. As new papers were released, she wanted to make a number of additions to the
eBook. Also, as time went on and she had more time to review her eBook plans, she started
identifying some changes that she wanted to make to her planned eBook.
Another input came from the business manager at the college bookstore, as he was quite
concerned about the projected cost of this eBook. Because this eBook included so many
reprints of existing articles and chapters, the estimated cost of the book was quite high. The
college expected their eBooks to be delivered at a low cost, as its bookstore costs had to cover
the bookstore overhead (servers for sales and distribution of the eBooks and marketing costs)
and the bookstore’s markup, as well as the costs of the eBook from Seahawk Books. The
Seahawk Books costs had to incorporate all the permissions costs, as well as all of the
desktop publishing and production costs.
The Customer Service Representative communicated these issues to several people within
Seahawk Books: the account manager for the college account, the supervisor managing
production for this eBook, the Publishers Liaison obtaining permissions for this book. The
account manager was concerned about upsetting this important customer, the supervisor didn’t
know how these various requests could all be accommodated or how it would impact his project,
and the Publishers Liaison was worried both about added costs for new permissions and the
time it would take to get them and the costs they had already expended for permissions no
longer needed.
And the professor’s requests just kept coming, at an increasing rate as it got closer to her
deadline for needing this eBook.
The supervisor was starting to make some estimates of what each change requested by the
professor would cost
An extra $500 for each new permission needed, in addition to the $500 already spent for
each permission already acquired that can no longer be used
Two hours of Publishers Liaison effort for each new permission needed at an
unburdened cost of $22 per hour (loaded cost is $55 with a 1.5 overhead rate)
One hour of supervisor time for re-planning each change at an unburdened cost of
$28 per hour (loaded cost is $70 with a 1.5 overhead rate)
Sales commission of 20%
This continuing series of requests for changes from the professor is quickly adding to the
upwardly spiraling cost of this project. The supervisor feels that something must be done about
this scope creep – continually changing scope.
Comment on the following aspects of the case study:
a)
Who are the stakeholders of this project? Who are the key stakeholders of the project?
b)
What impacts could these requested changes have on the budget?
c)
Could these requested changes also impact the schedule? If so, how?
d)
What is Seahawk Book’s process for dealing with changes from their customers? Do
you see any possible issues with this process?
e)
How would you recommend that Seahawk Books handle these changes? Who
should be involved?
f)
What should Seahawk Books do about the conflicting inputs from their customer – the
bookstore manager who wants inexpensive eBooks and the professor who wants the
best and most up-to-date collection of readings possible for her courses?
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