Volkswagen of America: Managing It Essay

Comment [MLW1]: Great job, Bianca. With your permission I would like to use this as an example for future students. GRADE: 100%

In 1895 there were only four cars officially registered in the U.S. Little more than 20 years later in 1916, 3,376,889 were registered! Because of the automotive industry 's major technological advances the automotive industry has been able to pull ahead of other industries over the years. This industry has also proven that to be successful in the business world, you have to take some risks. which has allowed them to get advancements that other industries who weren 't willing to make such risks fail to take advantage of.

Information Technology (IT) projects are an important part of a company's growth and advancement. Playing a key role in the development of most businesses, IT projects impact all departments and many work processes that take place throughout an organization. Certain factors must be taken into consideration when moving forward with an IT project, such as budget and importance. Effectively prioritizing IT projects helps to ensure that important projects are completed first. Using Project Portfolio Management (PPM) helps companies to identify projects that offer the most potential

The case is a clear illustration of the problem that arises from using multiple and mutually exclusive screening methods to select which project should be selected among a portfolio of projects. The projects being considered are Janus and Gemini. Janus is being proposed by the head of software development. On the other hand, project Gemini is being championed by the business applications organization.

BBUS 521 Enterprise IT Management Case 3: Volkswagen of America Synopsis: Volkswagen of America (VWoA) is the North American subsidiary of VW Automotive Group. They are faced with a common problem of having more funding requirements than available budget. They must come up with a means of prioritizing the over 40 projects that have been proposed by the 10 business units within VWoA, including IT-specific projects. The challenge faced by the chief information officer (CIO) of VWoA, Dr. Uwe Matulovic, is to ensure priorities of projects are aligned to the corporate strategy and that IT projects specifically are a means to enable the strategy and drive business value, and not just be considered an obstacle. Case 3 questions: 1.

Phase one formally called out the projects due dates for each proposals. These projects where deemed to provide much more involvement including funding and exposure to proposed initiatives used. These proposed projects where informally presented by the respected representatives explaining how each project could change the business. It was concluded that numerous amounts of projects had a lack of diversity and most had similar initiatives. In conclusion to phase one, it became noticeably clear to the business unit representatives that many projects could not be initiated without another project being completed. Phase two enables each business unit to formally create project proposals in alignment to the type of investment and technological application involvement (some projects having similar initiatives). Prior to the proposals being finalised, the leader of each business unit leader ranks the projects by priority (what needs to be done first or last). Once the prioritisations for the projects had been set, a need to convert the newly developed business-unit-focused project assortment into a strictly enterprise-focused based portfolio. The conversion of business to enterprise portfolio, drastically changed the project list prioritisation. As many of the business units top priority projects where not practical until a few more years they had been considered as corporate projects. As a result, business unit

When the CEO launches two new strategic initiatives requiring integration across all business units, the organization – whose IT decisions have been largely delegated to its business units in proportion to their revenue generating capacity – now faces the dilemma of how to prioritize its IT projects in order to support the new strategic “enterprise” vision.

The realities of shrinking IT budgets and increasing dependence on IT in organizations in recent years has resulted in a situation in which there is an intense competition for resources needed to execute and complete IT projects. According to Ross (2007), the shrinking IT budget in the face of increasing demand has brought new pressures to the IT function. To gain approval and funding for projects, IT departments must demonstrate that such new project will either result in cost saving, increased sales, or result in greater enterprise-wide efficiency (Ross, 2007). The intense competition for resources makes it imperative that IT managers need to

The four key behaviors of transformational leaders apply to the Chrysler story by showing what the Mercedes-Benz merger and new president Zetsche wished to achieve. He wanted to motivate the company to push themselves harder, the way they do when their back is against the wall; he used his influence of showing up to testing of the newest vehicle to help motivate the team. Zetsche also took into consideration that, Chrysler still wants to happy to be German owner, so he worked his way into the team, giving them input; praising them on things well done while also giving suggestions. With this intellectual stimulation he helped motivate employees and push them to see things in a new light, along with make it their personally responsibility

The American Auto Industry has grown grammatically since the very early of the twentieth century.

Volkswagen One of the largest automobile company in the world. Volkswagen is a company from Germany that deals with automobile manufacturing. In the list of top ten best selling cars Volkswagen’s has three cars, those us Volkswagen Golf, Volkswagen Passat and Volkswagen Beetle. The meaning of Volkswagen is ‘People’s car’, which is a German word. Slogan of Volkswagen is “Das Auto”. Ferdinand was funded Volkswagen was founded in 1937 its Headquarter is in Wolfsburg, in country Germany. Martin Winterkorn is the Current chairman of the company. Volkswagen’s revenue 94.7 billion euro in 2011 and also has more than 3658500 employees. Volkswagen is among world’s largest car manufacturer. Others are Toyota, General Motors,

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?

When a company defines the scope of projects, there are risks associated with the industry and the project. Upstream projects are becoming more profitable and more profound in size and complexity. Many companies do not possess the experience to tackle complex projects, so they adapt

All of the 11 projects are primarily ranked based on quantitative measurements. We have to also take into consideration of other quantitative aspects like length of the project, initial investment and anticipated payback period. Moreover, this

This paper will discuss the processes and pitfalls faced by Information Technology managers in today’s world of business. Today’s IT managers need not only be savvy about existing equipment and upcoming technology; but must also understand the budget issues they face and how to properly address them. The IT manager is asked to look into a crystal ball and predict what products will be beneficial and which requirements can be cut from the budget. They must be able to differentiate between the new shiny fad and products that will be a true asset to the company’s visions and goals. An IT budget can no longer be a static number on the company’s finance sheet; it must be a clear vision of the department’s future spending while falling in line with the goals and expectations of the company.