You are the lead consultant for an IT consulting firm that specializes in software. Pearson Waters, Inc. is a large, national company that offers property and casualty insurance to businesses and individuals. Your consulting team was hired by Pearson Waters to investigate the possibility of specialized productivity software for their employees to use in storing and retrieving customer data and product details, as well as performing various estimates to show to customers. After researching options, the company approved the design of a new software package, which your team has just now completed.

While you are wrapping up the project, you make some shocking discoveries:

• Some of the programming code completed by your team was actually copied from another company’s proprietary software.
• Two images used in the Employee Instruction Booklet were randomly found on the Internet, and no permission was secured for their use.

These are clear ethics violations. To rectify the situation, you were forced to fire the programmer who stole the code, hire another programmer to ethically rewrite that part of the software package, reprimand the employee who stole the images, locate alternative images for which permission was granted, and reprint the Employee Instruction Booklet.

Write a memo to your team about the above situation. Follow all instructions below and make sure you have also completed the unit reading:

• Your wording must be professional: give facts, explain ramifications, and refrain from emotional writing.
• Do not name the guilty employees or even specify their jobs; the idea is to explain the situation, not to write anything that could leave you open to a future lawsuit.
• The length of the body of your memo must be no less than 250 words and no more than 350 words.
• Do notuse sources – this must be written entirely in your own words without reference to any sources or quotes.
• Organize your memo to include separate paragraphsfor each of the following:
  • Briefly explain the issues that were found
  • Explain how the issues were resolved
  • Explain how these issues affect the client
  • Explain how these issues affect your company
• Follow the “deductive” method of writing, with most important information at the beginningof each paragraph.
• Write with full sentences, and do not include any lists.
• Your memo’s format must follow the instructions given below. You will therefore be responsible for the formatting; Assignments submitted on ready-made templates will notbe accepted.