Gerkin Pension Se r vices
Dana Lasket was the project manager of a project with the objective of determining the feasibility of moving a significant portion of Gerkin's computing capacity to another geographical location. Project completion was scheduled for 28 weeks. Dana had the project team motivated, and at the end of the twentieth week the project was on schedule.
The next week, during a casual lunch conversation, Dana discovered that the vice-president of finance had seri- ous doubts about the validity of the assumptions the team was using to decide which computers should be relocated.
Dana tried to convince him that he was wrong during two follow-up meetings, with no success. In fact, the more they talked, the more convinced the vice-president be- came that Dana was wrong. The project was too far along to change any assumptions without causing significant delays. In addition, the vice-president was likely to inherit the responsibility for implementing any approved plans for the new location. For those reasons, Dana felt it was essential to resolve the disagreement before the scheduled completion of the project. Dana requested a project audi- tor be assigned to audit the project, paying special atten-
tion to the assumptions made to identify the computers to be moved.
Questions: Is this a good use of the audit technique? Will it be helpful here? Why or why not?