Evaluating The New Process For Managing Priorities At Volkswagen Of America

In order for an organization to remain successful, it must be able to fulfill its day-to-day operations without mistakes. If these demands cannot be met, a new project must be created in order to stay in business and ahead of the competition. If an organization has a problem, they can benefit from fixing it by following a formal process for identifying, selecting, initiating, and planning projects (Valacich, 2009).

There are five major variables to consider when starting a major IT projects and there are scope, time, cost, quality, and risk. Most major IT projects will require a project manager to handle to overseeing of the project. The project management refers to the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to achieve specific targets within specified budget and time constraints. Project managers activities will include the planning of the work, assessing the risk, estimating the costs required to complete the project, and several other important duties. As in other areas of business, Project management for

The automotive industry globally involves the processes of manufacturing as well as sales of cars and other automobiles. The business of this industry is also inclusive of retailing activities like services; sale of spare parts, gas-station retails etc. by the year 2015, and the growth rate of the industry is expected to have a rise of 5.5% (Market Line, 2012). Moreover, as per International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers, this industry is the leading driver in terms of global economic progress and the largest employer. The changing trends and rising demand for technically advanced cars are giving out more opportunities. This essay is going to be a presentation on the analysis of the Volkswagen positioning strategy with respect to the Porters models of competitive strategies. This essay would be vital, as this analysis would help in revealing the company’s competitive and strategic position in the industry.

In today’s competitive economic climate, most project managers and organizational leadership has concluded the importance of the positive impact that project management leadership has contributed to the organization and on their projects and programs. This positive impact has caused most organizations to implement Project Support Offices (PSO). Within the Project Support Offices (PSO) there will be an understanding of the importance of the as-is and the to-be process is to managing projects and programs. The Project Support Office (PSO) uses this very effective technique in transforming vision into results. This technique is used to develop and populate an As-Is and To-Be diagrams. The As-Is diagram depicts the present state of the organizations, project or program process, culture, and capabilities. The To-Be diagram depicts the desired future state of how the organizations process, culture, and capabilities will look in the future. This case study reviews the goals confronted by the Pizza Delivered Quickly (PDQ) business while further developing the multiple related sub-systems to achieve the Pizza Delivery Quick (PDQ) requirements and be able to manage the project (Wysocki, 2012).

The Volkswagen Group follows a cost leadership and differentiation strategy. The Volkswagen Group achieves low cost leadership by sharing automotive parts amongst its products and as well as sharing vehicle platforms amongst the other 12 brands under the Volkswagen Group, such as Audi, Bentley, Porsche and Volkswagen Passenger Cars. The Group improves product differentiation by focusing on the product quality improvement, innovation and sustainability. This differentiation strategy helps ensure that the customers are satisfied with the products, and that the customers will be willing to pay a premium for the product.

Limitations: o Shortage of PMO expert resources; o Staff consisted of: PMO director + 3 contract project managers. Project charter introduced “idea form” = used to prioritize projects. PMO responsibilities: o Establish, publish, and disseminate project practices, standards and tools; o Add Later – Portfolio Management & Archiving of projects for knowledge sharing.

1) How should Matulovic respond to his fellow executives who are calling to ask him for special treatment outside the new priority management system?

The project manager’s authority is too low, has a short time to review the project proposal, difficult communicate with the user department and receive less support from senior management. Additional, the project manager lack of human resources, employees were understaffed, and no senior analysts were available. It is difficult to implement the project in this satiation that lack of support, less time and too much task. Therefore, the project management office is extremely critical. The project management office can build their project managers team, hire temporary employees and senior analysts in need.

Project Management Office (PMO) and Agile method are highly reputable terms in many organizations, especially in their IT projects. The PMO is a group of people or committee within an organization that is responsible to define and maintain standards and practices for traditional project management. The ultimate objective for the PMO is to gain the benefits that are derived from applying Project Management (PM) methods, practices and policies. Thus, the PMO over time will become the origin for documentation, guidance and metrics regarding to any practices that are involved in managing projects within the organization, as well as it will be the communication channel that

As according to the AtekPC Project Management Office case, the purpose1 of a PMO is to fulfill the need for greater discipline in managing IT projects. Moreover, it establishes or enhances project management skills, process, and governance structures within an organization (Applegate Pg. 462). The director of Application Development, Richard Steinberg, described AtekPC’s PMO’s purpose as a “methodology” for managing projects with standardized practices. As stated within the case, the main purpose of the PMO is to provide standardization in managing projects of large, complex scales as well as gain improvements in planning and performance of initiatives (Applegate Pg. 465). The case generalizes

This document is an annotated outline for a Project Management Plan, adapted from the PMI Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) and IEEE Standard for Project Management Plans. The Project Management Plan is considered to be a “Best Practice” template by the ETS Enterprise Program Management Office (EPMO).

1) What is your assessment of the new process for managing priorities at Volkswagen of America? Are the criticisms justified? Is it an improvement over the old process?

In this case VWOA had two processes one was the old process and the other was the new process. The old process was the IT projects priorities were made by the Executive Leadership Team (ELT) with some discussion and evaluation of project and fund those were available the decisions were made. This process was not structured neither, they involved any departmental heads to discuss on the prioritization of projects. On the other hand with the new process that Dr. Use Mathulovic, Chief information officer (CIO) of VWOA implemented and thought that would improve the way of prioritizing the IT projects was “to make trade-offs explicit and link the projects and the core business

As an employee or a manager in either the legal office or engineering department it would have rather difficult to prevent this incident. I am not sure that you could have prevented it in its entirety. In order to have prevented this incident you would need intimate knowledge of the operation and its people. The company would have to only hire ethical people with a strong set of core values. “A decision is ethical if it satisfies certain commonly accepted measures of utility (e.g., greatest good for the largest number), or commonly accepted measure of motive or duty (e.g., authenticity)” (Jayaraman & Min, 1993). There is no test that will truly tell you who someone is, only time. “One has to find out, explore, discover. Creative problem solving and anticipating unintended con sequences” (Jayaraman & Min, 1993) This is why you could not have stopped what happened in Volkswagen. I believe there are steps that could have been taken to mitigate the potential of an incident like this happening.

In reviewing this article it was observed that some employees were skeptical of the merger between Chrysler and Daimler-Benz. Daimler-Benz employees were proud of the elite image and were concerned about having that tarnished by another company. Chrysler employees voiced concerns about the addition of a foreign partner to one of America's auto manufacturers. Employees needed reassurance that this merger was going to be a success! In light of all the adversity both companies faced since announcing their plans to merge, how did they remain so steadfast in their commitment to pursuing this merger? What kept them believing this merger was a good deal that deserved a second look? To answer these questions I want to step back and discuss what I