Fnb questions and answers

MIS Project Management at First National Bank During the last five years, First National Bank (FNB) has been one of the growing banks in the Midwest. The holding company of the bank has been actively involved in purchasing small banks thoughout the state of Ohio. This expansion and the resulting increase of operations had been attended by considerable growth in numbers of employees and in the complexity of the organizational structure. In five years the staff of the bank has increased by 35 percent, and total assets have grown by 70 percent. management is eagerly looking forward to a change in the Ohio banking laws that will allow statewide branch banking. INFORMATION SERVICES DIVISION (ISD) HISTORY Data processing at has grown at a much faster pace than the rest of the bank. The systems and programming staff grew from twelve in 1970 to more than seventy-five during the first part of 1977. Because of several future projects, the staff was expected to increase by 50 percent during the next two years. Prior to 1972, the Information Services Department reported to the executive vice president of the Consumer Banking and Operations Division. As a result, the first banking applications to be computerized were in the demand deposit, savings, and consumer credit banking areas. The computer was seen as a tool to 57 Priorities Committee Exhibit Informatlon Services Division chart speed up the processing of consumer transactions. Little effort was expended to meet the informational requirements of the rest of the bank. This caused a highlevel conflict, since each major operating organization of the bank did not have equal access to systems and programming resources. The management of became increasingly aware of the benefits that could accrue from a realignment of the bank's organization into one that would be better attuned to the total information requirements of the corporation. In 1982 the Information Services Division (ISD) was created. ISD was removed from the Consumer Banking and Operations Division to become a separate division reporting directly to the president. An organizational chart depicting the Information Services Division is shown in Exhibit I. PRIORITIES COMMITTEE During 1982 the Priorities Committee was formed. It consists of the chief executive officer of each of the major operating organizations whose activities are 58 Exhibit MIS PROJECT MANAGEMENT AT FIRST NATIONAL BANK First National Bank organizational chart directly affected by the need for new or revised information systems. The Priorities Committee was established to ensure that the resources of systems and programming personnel and computer hardware would be used only on those information systems that can best be cost justified. Divisions represented on the committee are included in Exhibit The Priorities Committee meets monthly to previously set priorities and rank new projects introduced since the last meeting. Bank policy states that the only way to obtain funds for an information development project is to submit a request to the Priorities Committee and have it approved and ranked in overall priority order for the bank. Placing potential projects in ranked sequenceis done by the senior executives. The primary document used for Priorities Committee review is called the project proposal. THE PROJECT PROPOSAL CYCLE When a user department a need for the development or enhancement of an information system, it is required to prepare a draft containing a statement of the problem from its functional perspective. The problem statement is the president of ISD, who authorizes Systems Research (see Exhibit I) to prepare an impact statement. This impact statement will include a general perspective of: overview from The Project Proposal Life Cycle Project feasibility Project complexity Conformity with long-range ISD plans Estimated ISD resource commitment Review of similar requests Unique Broad estimate of total costs The problem and impact statements are then presented to the members of the Priorities Committee for their review. The proposals are preliminary in nature, but they permit the broad concept (with a very approximate cost attached to it) to be reviewed by the executive group to see if there is serious interest in pursuing the idea. If the interest level of the committee is low, then the idea is rejected. However, if the Priorities Committee members feel the concept has merit, they authorize the Systems Research Group of ISD to prepare a full-scale project proposal that contains: A detailed statement of the problem Identification of alternative solutions Impact of request on: User division ISD Other operating divisions Estimated costs of solutions Schedule of approximate task duration Cost-benefit analysis of solutions Long-range implications Recommended course of action After the project proposal is prepared by systems research, the user sponsor must review the proposal and appear at the next Priorities Committee meeting to speak in favor of the approval and priority level of the proposed work. The project proposal is evaluated by the committee and either dropped, tabled for further review, or assigned a priority relative to ongoing projects and available resources.