AWWA CSC95039

In 1991, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California began an assessment of its administrative and business computing capabilities. The assessment rated the effectiveness of current applications in meeting core business objectives, the process used to manage and develop new applications, and the infrastructure upon which applications operate. The assessment highlighted the need to overhaul virtually all of Metropolitan's core business systems as well as to evaluate the architecture supporting the development and operation of new systems. Metropolitan's mandate was multifold: modify core business practices to be simpler, easier to follow, and more in keeping with mainstream business practices; provide better service from the core business areas by using upgraded application tools; reduce the cost of providing services; provide an integrated corporate solution and produce it quickly; and implement a large number of applications across the organization within a short period of time. To accomplish changes of this magnitude Metropolitan needed an effective project management strategy which would facilitate acceptance and support of new applications and organizational change across the District. Metropolitan was faced with the challenge of unifying disparate parts of the organization to effectively implement a new technical environment, an upgraded network, a new database management system and a full suite of business applications. The technical environment was to be radically overhauled with UNIX open systems, client server applications, and Windows-based workstations replacing a traditional IBM proprietary host based environment.