Harvard Business Review Article - Volkswagen Case Analysis Essay

1. How would you describe Boeing’s approach to project management? What are its strengths and weaknesses?

Smith and her IT leadership team recommended an annual budget, which made decisions on the operating projects. In addition, the team was also dedicated to delivery a comprehensive project status report to each business unit and the WestJet leadership team (Marrone, 2015). Any work that was not up to the standard was not performed and through this Smith tried to achieve and deliver maximum value for WestJet. Hence, “it makes it possible to infer that … organizations’ IT governance efforts contribute to business value” (Prasad et al., 2012, p.

The role played by the IT in the company to the rest of the organization is reactive to business conditions rather than a proactive approach. IT has been busy establishing several IT processes, policies, and projects in order to catch up with current demand from customers, and has been relying on the “diving catch” approach of finishing things at the very last minute.

In this paper, the author will introduce a failure case of K-Mart 's IT modernization system project. In 2001, K-mart took $1.4 billion dollars into this project with the purpose of competing with its rival Walmart. The dream is beautiful, but the real work is cruel. After 18 months, the project was failed because of lacking of cash. What happened in the detailed for this project? $1.4 billion dollar is huge numbers, why it was still not enough to pay and distribute for this project? How did its project manager do in this project? What are the project problems? How can we learn from the failure of this case? The paper includes the case background introduction, the project development process, the problems in the project, analysis and

The objective of this study was to compare WestJet’s IT cost, resources, and budget to the industry standards. The observation was: WestJet’s IT was right on target regarding the total number of employees, but there were problems regarding the IT employees, firstly there were many IT employees who started their careers with WestJet and they only knew “The WestJet IT way”. Also, there was a mismatch in the number of employees within the skill sets as compared to other similar sized companies. System operations and procedure were somewhat matching to the industry standard but were not up to the mark. IT budget was the main concern, every month meetings were scheduled among the VPs of business unit and VP of IT regarding the negotiation of the priorities and resources, but business unit VPs were not able to prioritize the things which resulted in pressure on IT unit that eventually caused longer time in the execution of projects. The IT organization at WestJet was Structured as per the IT’s group’s conventional internal function of planning, Building, operating, maintaining and

Over the past few years growth, of WW has not increased and it has remained stagnant due to the slow growth of the economy. In order to improve the growth of the organization, a few IT organizational changes are required that will help streamline the internal processes for WW to improve the

The challenges facing Mr. Bob Stetzel upon his arrival at VTB were many. However there are some which weigh heavier on the success of the organization than others. It is those challenges that will be highlighted in this report. One such problem is the constant influx of uneven demand for products and services – which suggests a lack of IT strategy connected to the business goals.

The company has decided to use different applications instead of using a single ERP system, which in turns would make their operations smoother. They have chosen to do this in order to be cost efficient and to focus on the specific need so each department uses a different application. That is connected by middleware that they don’t fully understand on how to operate, and are afraid that if they attempt to change it, it would crash all of their system. This in turn makes their operational capabilities not the strongest as it relates to their business model. On the other hand, some of the challenges that they face is that they will not be able to complete all orders or be able to implement improvements due to the increase volume of request that need to be processed during this time. Some of the IT related issues are those that are associated with the different applications that are being used. If an applications crashes then it would hold them up significantly in completing all orders and having them be delivered on time. Primarily the lack of staffing and the lack of IS improvements puts them at a disadvantage against their competitors who more than likely have significant more sophisticated IS infrastructure.

Copyright 2009 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America This chapter was originally published as chapter 1 of The Adventures of an IT Leader, copyright 2009 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the

Also, they think that they can send the IT folks onto the field once they are done with the planning and budget cycle. But, little do they understand here that it would be of no use sending the IT people after the planning as things to be changed as early as possible in a project life cycle. The more delay in the changes, the more complex and expensive the project would be.

IT department managers should first try and understand the team capacity and availability for a project identify the feasibility of achieving the same in the given timelines and accordingly plan for the resource allocation. This has to be communicated clearly to the business team manager in a meeting and come to a common conclusion.

• Meet regularly with other departments’ heads- Sales- HR-Accounting-Marketing-Customer Service-Institutional trading-R&A-Client Services to communicate IT strategies and projects. Gather feedback from other departments regarding current needs. Be sure that all departments are aware of an IT strategy and that all future projects and initiatives must fall within this strategy.

Alignment of an enterprise’s goals with its IT1 and IS1 systems has been a challenge ever since IT became a business enabler. Proposing an IT alignment requires a thorough understanding of the business goals of the enterprise and the knowledge that alignment is an iterative process which requires constant measurement and honing (Chan, 2002). Enterprises often face the problem of balance of priorities between IT and Business objectives. This report deals with one such case that faced alignment and prioritization hardships resulting in an unclear approach to achieve a corporate strategy.

BMW has embarked on a mission to cut its notoriously long product development time in half utilizing a newly developed system code named "Digital Car". Senior management has decided to utilize the new process on the 7-series platform. In order to accomplish this goal, BMW is preparing to take advantage of the latest computer technology in car development. At the forefront of the new plan is a debate over the use of computer-aided-styling (CAS). We recommend that BMW implement the Computer Aided Styling system and processes into their production development program.

Information Technology (IT) budgeting has become a constant struggle for companies, both big and small. The speed at which technology becomes obsolete, management’s expectations for quick deployment of new technology, and a supplier’s change of their operating model to focus on “as-a-service” (Feldman, 2015) recurring revenue, greatly affect how IT departments approach their budget these days. Other factors such as; lack of company vision or one’s inability to see how their IT department fits into the corporation’s goals and expectations are all huge pitfalls for the IT manager. The inability for IT and finance divisions to