Reflection - The Puerto Rico Education Project System Development in an Island Paradise

Reflection - The Puerto Rico Education Project

System Development in an Island Paradise

 

Memo

Dear Gary Johnson,

I had a meeting with the consultants from JAGR regarding whether USCO should continue with the existing team members with few changes in corporate policy or they should send the unhappy employees back to US. Before the meeting, I was sure that this project is becoming a failure because of poor evaluation, planning and administration. This project should be evaluated as international project because of its scope and prevailing conditions in Puerto Rico.

After listening to JAGR consultants’ presentation and Q & A session, I now have a clearer picture of the scenario and I realized that we could have kept those employees away from the hassle and frustration if this project was assessed as international project.

According to weighted decision criteria of JAGR, cost, time efficiency, positive impact on future projects, and morale are the deciding factors among the available alternatives. As a matter of fact, this project is already over the budget and not meeting deadlines.  Therefore, I agree that cost and time are the major factors that we need to work on. Employees’ low morale needs to be addressed at its earliest.

To bring this project back on track, if we send the unhappy employees back to the US and hire the Puerto Rican programmers for their replacement, I think that will affect the morale of remaining employees and their families. It may also cause a gap between native Puerto Rican programmers and foreign US programmers. Puerto Rican programmers are young and may lack the necessary experience and expertise and may take longer to come up to the speed with the project. Also, we’ll have to bear the cost of moving the disgruntled employees back to US and it will become the sunk cost. We may have to grant them severance pay for their settlement in US.

After going though the pros and cons of the above aforementioned alternative, I strongly recommend that USCO should reassess the project as “International Project” instead of domestic project. The policies should be reestablished for governing compensation, taxation, housing, schooling costs, career tracking and many other factors. We should also allocate some time to reorganize the project. Meanwhile intensive language and cultural orientation should be provided not for the employees only but for their families as well.

During the reorganization, employees can also readjust with improved compensation plans along with better schooling facilities. After attending the language and cultural training, their families would be able to better mingle with the local community. This will eventually boost employees’ morale and productivity. Once these changes are successfully applied, we will be able to see the project back on track.

With best regards,

Tom Ballard