Page 119 -

86 Part 1 • SyStemS analySiS FundamentalS

®
HYPERCaSE ExPERIENCE 3.1

“I hope everyone you’ve encountered at MRE has treated you links. It tells the story of our company and the people who work
well. Here’s a short review of some of the ways you can access here. We’re quite proud of it and have gotten positive feedback
our organization through HyperCase. The reception area at MRE about it from visitors.
contains the key links to the rest of our organization. Perhaps “If you have had a chance to interview a few people and see
you’ve already discovered these on your own, but I wanted to how our company works, I’m sure you are becoming aware of
remind you of them now because I don’t want to get so engrossed some of the politics involved. We are also worried, though, about
in the rest of our organizational problems that I forget to mention more technical issues, such as what constitutes feasibility for a
them. training project and what does not.”
“The empty doorway you see is a link to the next room, which
we call the East Atrium. You have probably noticed that all open HYPERCASE Questions
doorways are links to adjacent rooms. Notice the building map dis-
played in the reception area. You are free to go to public areas such 1. What criteria do the Training Unit use to judge the feasibility
as the canteen, but as you know, you must have an employee escort of a new project? List them.
you into a private office. You cannot go there on your own. 2. List any changes or modifications to these criteria that you
“By now you have probably noticed the two documents and would recommend.
the computer on the small table in the reception area. The little one 3. Snowden Evans has asked you to help prepare a proposal for
is the MRE internal phone directory. Just click on an employee a new project tracking system for the Training Unit. Briefly
name, and if that person is in, he or she will grant you an interview discuss the technical, economic, and operational feasibility
and a tour of the office. I leave you to your own devices in figuring of each alternative for a proposed project tracking system for
out what the other document is. the Training Unit.
“The computer on the table is on and displays the web page for 4. Which option would you recommend? Use evidence from
MRE. You should take a look at the corporate site and visit all the HyperCase to support your decision.

the tension release necessary can be gained through skillful use of feedback by all team members.
All members, however, need to agree that the way they interact (that is, the process) is important
enough to merit some time. Productivity goals for processes are discussed in a later section.
Securing agreement on appropriate member interaction involves creating explicit and
implicit team norms (collective expectations, values, and ways of behaving) that guide members
in their relationships. A team’s norms belong to it and will not necessarily transfer from one team
to another. These norms change over time and are better thought of as a team process of interac-
tion than a product.
Norms can be functional or dysfunctional. Just because a particular behavior is a norm for a
team does not mean it is helping the team to achieve its goals. For example, an expectation that junior
team members should do all project scheduling may be a team norm. By adhering to this norm, the
team puts extreme pressure on new members and does not take full advantage of the experience of
the team. It is a norm that, if continued, could make team members waste precious resources.
Team members need to make norms explicit and periodically assess whether norms are
functional or dysfunctional in helping the team achieve its goals. The overriding expectation
for your team must be that change is the norm. Ask yourself whether team norms are helping or
hindering the team’s progress.
Setting Project Productivity Goals
As you work with your team members on a variety of projects, you or your team leader will
acquire acumen for projecting what the team can achieve in a specific amount of time. Using the
hints discussed in the earlier section in this chapter on methods for estimating time required and
coupling them with experience will enable the team to set worthwhile productivity goals.
Systems analysts are accustomed to thinking about productivity goals for employees who
show tangible outputs, such as the number of pairs of blue jeans sewn per hour, the number
of entries keyed in per minute, or the number of items scanned per second. As manufacturing