Case Study - All World Airlines (AWA)


CIO's Notes

The CIO, Don Geekbine, was informed of the decision and was asked to perform a risk assessment of the outsourcing process. As part of his initial analysis, he prepared the following notes, in no particular order, which were incorporated into his briefing points:

  • All applications were developed internally; reservations are fairly standard and could be easily outsourced; sensitivity analysis, flight and crew scheduling have some specific requirements that are only available with internally developed solutions.
  • All systems were written in COBOL; many programmers are retiring, and those available command higher salaries.
  • US programmers and operations are located in an economically depressed area; workers with eliminated positions will have problems finding new jobs.
  • European work rules have long lead times for the elimination of jobs.
  • There is a need to discuss transferring programming to low-cost locations such as India.
  • The CFO indicated concern regarding compliance with the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002; Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance is also a concern.
  • Equipment and data centre facilities are currently leased. What will be the course of action for the leases?
  • Operational processes will require governance to ensure satisfactory performance of key project deliverables, key processes and system availability.
  • Don has not performed risk assessments before and is unfamiliar with the issues that should be considered.