Abstract

The article focuses on effective data processing organization. The last decade has been characterized by a mood of unbridled optimism in the field of data processing. In the face of unrealized expectations, managers have repeatedly buried their failures or worse, learned to live with them and then turned to even more ambitious undertakings with hardly a pause. While other aspects of corporate activity were subject to hard-headed scrutiny, the computer budget appeared to be sacred. Its mystique allowed it to escape the careful review that other expenditures had to undergo. A tight coterie of computer specialists talked in terms of microsecond cycle times and megabyte memories with very little concern as to the purposes to which this impressive technology was being applied. Fortunately, this era seems to have come to an end and many managers are beginning to ask some long overdue questions. The article explores some of the circumstances which have lead to this effective data processing crisis and look at ways whereby this situation can be improved.