Suppose that the vice president of marketing asks you to write a program to create labels for a onetime advertising promotion. As IT manager, you know that the labels can be prepared more efficiently by exporting the data to a word processing program and using a mail merge feature. How would you handle this situation?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

If the company has a systems review committee, then the committee would review all systems requests, including this one. As IT manager, you probably are a member of that committee. If you can demonstrate to the committee that the systems request is impractical, then it would be rejected. The rejected systems request would then be returned to the vice president of marketing along with the committee's reasons for rejection.
If the organization does not use a systems review committee, then as IT manager you probably have the authority to accept or reject projects. If you decide that this particular systems request is impractical, then return the request along with the reasons for rejection. So, in this case too, it is your responsibility to demonstrate that this systems request is not practical.
If a project truly is impractical, then time and cost estimates should reveal that. In this situation, prepare estimates of the costs to prepare the mailing labels on the computer by writing and using a computer program versus the cost of having a staff person prepare the labels using a word processor. If the systems request can be shown to be an inefficient use of the firm’s time and money, the vice president of marketing will agree that the project should not be done.