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. Define acronyms
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b. DBC stands for Digital Business Council and is responsible for categorizing projects, assessing their business impact, discerning their alignment with goals, and making trade-off decisions, with the goal of reaching a final list of projects that should be funded.
c. ITSC stands for IT Steering Committee, or Information Technology Steering
Committee. It guides and approves the process of IT project selection and prioritization. d. PMO stands for Program Management Office, which is responsible for managing all IT projects, establishing standards of operations and framework for project status reporting and reviews. It is a subsection of the BPTO, and carries out the process, as approved by the ITSC.
e. NRG is known as Next Round of Growth, which is an organizational readiness program which defines the goal, function, and organizational changes required to enable the new global product diversification strategy.
2. What is your assessment of the new process for managing priorities at Volkswagen of
America?
a. It is a very structured approach to identifying opportunities, categorizing them, identifying dependencies and prioritizing projects. There seems to be a lack of understanding how technology projects impact the business, as well as
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
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).
Ford Motor Company is America's one of the largest car manufacturer and seller. In year 1987 it faces an external business environment change in the form of new warranty policy announcement by its major competitors General Motor, which changes the current philosophy of warranty in U.S car market. This policy change may have implications not only on Ford’s sales and market share but also on various departments within organization (such as manufacturing, quality assurance, parts and service, and extended service plans) and their dealer network. In answer, Ford executives have to respond through a best suitable course of action by carefully analyzing the current market variables.
The automobile has had a profound impact on the United States. It has brought us
In the twentieth century, the introduction of the motor vehicle in the United States became not only noteworthy, but also vital in the development of modern American civilization. This technologically complex machine led citizens to vast future dependency on the invention. While mobility was suddenly not limited to alternative, more convoluted options such as railroad stations or bicycles, yet copiously amplified to aid convenience and expanded leisure opportunities. From auto-racing to redesigning infrastructure, motor vehicles allowed progression, digression, and essentially uttermost change to lifestyles of the American people.
challenges, however, are the most difficult ones to face and overcome. Some environmental issues that
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
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.
IT projects. The challenge with this council was to align IT related projects with business goals
1. According to a major economics consulting firms, Fiat`s ¨South American operations are the jewel in the Italian company`s global operations¨. Fiat has plants in Brazil and Argentina, and Brazil is the biggest market, well ahead of its home-country market. In 2011, with the Chrysler venture taking up more and more of the firm`s attention – and as European sales suffered a steep decline – rumors began to circulate that Marchionne might move Fiat headquarters from Italy to the United States. Discuss Fiat´s takeover of Chrysler as part of strategy to transform itself from international business into a multinational or global business
technology project. The BPTO produced weekly status reports and monthly budget reviews helping the company gauge where it was heading towards. Thus the alignment started advancing (Austin, 2007).
AtekPC is a mid-sized U.S PC maker with sales of $ 1.9 billion and employed 2100 full time employees and additional 200 part time workers. This case discusses most of the obstacles to establishing a PMO (Project management Office) are beyond the CIO and PMO Manager's control. We see a lot of problems faced by the CIO in implementing a PMO in the enterprise. Regardless of the technical challenges during the implementation, the core of the problems seems to be that the PMO is lacking organization support, from the top to the bottom. There is not enough executive stakeholder support, there is no visibility of the program, there is a conflict of interests within departments
The new process that was instituted to prioritize IT projects at Volkswagen of America is very well organized. It takes an IT project and looks at it from multiple aspects, from business to IT. It also allows for several departmental entities to play a more active role in tying in business objectives with stated benefits of the IT project. As stated in Applegate, “IT governance is the effort to devise an overarching and integrated approach, addressing broad themes such as operating performance, strategic control, risk management, and values alignment.” (Applegate, 403) In
The automobile is a huge part of American history. Many people say that it was the key to freedom. However, many people now say that the automobile is a bad thing, because of its negative effects to the environment and people. I think that the automobile is still a good thing for America. I think this because it gave people freedom, it gave people joy, and it also gave many people jobs.
Despite First National Bank (FNB) is one of the fastest growing banks in Midwest, during the created and implement the Information Services Division (ISD), in its project management some problem can be identified. The following these factors are the primary deficient of the project has been tabled: 1) The decision-making process of ISD is too long and high temporal cost of Priority Committee; 2) The organizational structure is not a matrix; 3) The project manager faced many difficulties and challenges; 4) Low involvement of user department. The researchers Pretorius, Steyn, and Jordaan (2012) in their present that “project management success is dependent on the following