Analyzing Ethical Issues in Early IT Project Launch: A Case Study

This case study delves into the ethical considerations surrounding an IT project's premature launch, driven by the CEO's desire to secure another contract. The central issue revolves around the project manager's request to launch the project without implementing necessary data encryption, potentially compromising data security and violating the ACS code of professionalism. The analysis highlights the potential negative impact on the client, including privacy risks and potential legal repercussions for the company. The study evaluates how the early launch hampers the primacy of public interest, quality of life, honesty, competencies, professional development, and integrity of professionalism as defined by ACS laws. Recommendations emphasize the importance of adhering to project standards, prioritizing data security, and exploring alternative marketing strategies that align with ethical project delivery practices, ensuring client satisfaction and maintaining the company's reputation.

Running head: ORGANIZATIONAL IT ETHICS
Organizational IT Ethics
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
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Introduction
The main purpose of this assignment is to deal with the ethical issues related with the
early launch of a project. The case study deals with the delivery of a project before the
mentioned deadline of the project as per the CEO of the IT Company. In this particular case,
the project manager is asking the senior developer to launch the project early and without
providing any sort of data encryption in the project as it will delay the procedure of delivery
of the project. The ACS code of professionalism as well as ethics seems to be violated as per
the ACS laws.
The Code of the Australian Computer Society mainly consists of six values, which
should be followed by every professional of the ICT (ACS, 2019) .They are briefly described
below:
1. The Primacy of Public Interest: This value will help professionals in identifying the
interests of their work. Further, this value will place the interests of public above the
business, personal or sectional interests.
2. Honesty: This value states that honesty in the professional sector is very much
needed. The trust in the profession should not be breached (Burmeister, 2017). The
professional should be honest with the representation of knowledge, skills, products
as well as services.
3. The Enhancement of the quality of life: This value strives the enhancement of the
quality of life that are affected by the work.
4. Competence: This value enhances the competition of working in the ICT sector.
Moreover, this will increase the diligence of working for the stakeholders of the
professionals.

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5. Professional development: This value refers to the personal development in
professionalism of the professional as well as of the other staffs (Sánchez, 2015). The
person should keep on continuing to upgrade himself regularly with new skills and
knowledge.
6. Professionalism: This value refers to the enhancement of the integrity of the
professionals in the ACS (DeGeorge, 2017). The value also enhances a respect for
each other in the organization.
The professionals in the ICT of Australia should abide by these above stated 6 values.
THE CASE STUDY
In this case, Graig the senior programmer is working on a project with his team,
whose submission dates is due by 1 month (Early, 2019). Now the program director receives
a call from the CEO who wants the project to be launched early. The CEO is actually worried
for the early delivery of the project as he has another contract to sign with the same client
which worth around 3 million. The program director assumes that the early delivery of the
project could help in the contract signature. Graig expressed his views on the idea of the
program director by saying that he already said Jason another senior developer that the
encryption is very much necessary for the project as well as the delivery of the project is
difficult by the original date itself. Graig gets confused, as he very well knows that if the
project is delivered without encryption then it can create risks for the project. Then Graig is
persuaded by the program director by saying that the early delivery will be very beneficial for
the company as well as he will provide Graig with handsome bonuses for the early delivery
of the project. It is also suggested by the program director that the encryption could be
provided with the software update after some days of the launch.

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Ethical issues related to the case study
The main issue that is related with the early delivery of the project is that the
encryption of project data (Mason, 2017). This will put a negative impact on the project’s
security. As encryption of data is a necessary thing in terms of security of data, the early
launch of the project will put limitations on the proper testing procedure of the project
leading to the high possibility of the project to be filled with bugs resulting in the software to
be of very low quality (Thornley et al., 2018). So the issues will mainly be the data security
of the project which will lead to the bad experience by the user.
Analysis of the issue
The most affected party regarding this will be the client. The early delivery of the project
without providing data encryption will result in the lack of security from the end user
perspective (Crane & Matten, 2016). The client’s privacy will be at serious risk with the lack
of security. Moreover the company will be at risk for losing the customer as well as the
reputation and the company could face some lawsuits in this situation. Again the company
could face serious financial problems for maintaining the project in future due to the early
release of the project without encryption.
As per the mentioned case study the early delivery of the project without encryption
puts the data security of the client as well privacy of the client in danger (Pearson, 2017).
Henceforth the ethical issues of the clients like client confidentiality and privacy comes to
concern for this case. The mutually acclaimed trust between the client and the company will
also be hampered if the project delivery is done without encryption. Moreover the program
director wants Graig to get persuaded by the bonuses for him and his team which is not
correct.

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The ACS laws that are hampered by the early launch are described below:
The primacy of the public interest is hampered as the client’s will get an incomplete
solution.
The quality of life is said to be hampered as the client will get bug filled software that
will lower down the performance in future.
As the encryption is not provided with the software delivery and that is not well
informed to the client the honesty is also not represented in the software life cycle.
The competencies are also not matched for the client.
This will also reflect a negative aspect for the professional development of the
company.
Lastly the integrity of professionalism as provided in ACS is also hampered due to the
incomplete project delivery.
Recommendations
In this case the client will be very satisfied with the project’s early delivery at that
instance but the incomplete solution of the software will be very dissatisfying for the client
(Gelinas et al., 2017). In order to avoid the early project’s delivery, the marketing team
should come up with some marketing strategies which will follow the delivery of the project
with encryption of the software. One of the best solution for the software delivery will be that
the organization should maintain some standards by implementing some tests to certify the
software delivery procedure.

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REFERENCES
ACS, L. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.acs.org.au/content/dam/acs/acs-documents/ACS
%20Code-of-Professional-Conduct_v2.1.pdf
Burmeister, O. K. (2017). Professional ethics in the information age. Journal of Information,
Communication and Ethics in Society, 15(4), 348-356.
Crane, A., & Matten, D. (2016). Business ethics: Managing corporate citizenship and
sustainability in the age of globalization. Oxford University Press.
DeGeorge, R. T. (2017). Ethical issues in information technology. The Blackwell guide to
business ethics, 267-288.
Early, l. (2019). Scenario 3: Early Launch. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=v5M7ohdZ6qA
Gelinas, L., Pierce, R., Winkler, S., Cohen, I. G., Lynch, H. F., & Bierer, B. E. (2017). Using
social media as a research recruitment tool: ethical issues and recommendations. The
American Journal of Bioethics, 17(3), 3-14.
Mason, R. O. (2017). Four ethical issues of the information age. In Computer Ethics (pp. 41-
48). Routledge.
Pearson, R. (2017). Business ethics as communication ethics: Public relations practice and
the idea of dialogue. In Public relations theory (pp. 111-131). Routledge.
Sánchez, M. A. (2015). Integrating sustainability issues into project management. Journal of
Cleaner Production, 96, 319-330.
Thornley, C. V., Murnane, S., McLoughlin, S., Carcary, M., Doherty, E., & Veling, L.
(2018). The Role of Ethics in Developing Professionalism Within the Global ICT

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