Organizing for conversion;

              Organizing for Conversion
by JOHN W. NIXON Consultant, Management Advisory Services, San Francisco Office
Presented before the Mortgage Bankers Association of Amer­ica
National Automation Seminar, Chicago—September 1966
MY ASSIGNMENT today, "Organizing for Conversion," covers the gamut of things that must be done during the period beginning when a contract has been signed with a manufacturer for the delivery of a computer system and ending when the system is operational. Mr. Gordon has explained some of the things to look for during the feasi­bility
study. As you know, that is the period when grandiose proposals are submitted to solve all of an organization's problems. The conversion period is that crucial time that determines whether the system succeeds or fails and whether everyone concerned ends up a hero or a bum.
When a company converts to a computer, it is usually an attempt to automate certain manual procedures or human thought processes and thus achieve faster and more accurate results than would be possible under manual methods. It is rather odd that the success or failure of this conversion to machine methods is almost entirely dependent on how well humans perform during the conversion period. It is very rare, indeed, to find installations that fail because of poor equipment. It is quite common, however, to find installations that are unsuccessful be­cause
of incompetent personnel or because competent personnel have failed to understand the proper roles they should play during the con­version
period. The entire organization usually gets involved with conversion to a greater or lesser extent; however, today I should like to concentrate on the two groups that we feel are most important in determining whether an installation will be a success or failure. One is the management group and the other is a group that I have chosen to call the Conversion Committee. I do not mean to downgrade the pro­grammers,
analysts, and EDP operating personnel, but I feel that their part in the conversion process is pretty well defined and has been docu­mented
in many technical journals.
SENIOR MANAGEMENT
In the data processing effort, as in any other major effort of the organization, senior management must take the ultimate responsibility for the success or failure of the program. Unfortunately, in the ma­jority
of installations, management has not been very active in the data processing project and, hence, must take most of the blame for unsuc-
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