Mini-Case Study: Managing Change at Global Green Books
Publishing
Global Green Books Publishing is producing customized eBooks
for a local college. 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 Global Green 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 Global Green
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 Global Green Books. The Global Green 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 Global Green 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 thetime 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 replanning 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 Global Green 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 Global Green Books handle
these changes? Who
should be involved?
f) What should Global Green 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?
please answer questions 1-3-4
