* IntensCare was not intended as a mainstream project in the beginning. Only $500,000 was allocated, and people were often pulled away to work on other projects
A dedicated team was formed only after more than 1 year of work
Jack Fogel was assigned as Production Leader in spite of having been observed as laidback.
O’Brien and Gerson were always looking out for each other and this bothered Merz. Merz felt she was responsible for all deadlines but did not have the authority to get the others to meet their deadlines
Due to budget cuts, the number of engineers on the team had reduced and they were working part time on other projects too.
The technical team was not concerned with the legal aspect of it which Baio was pushing for
Gerson wasn’t sure the offshore software development would be reliable.
Merz wanted a modular design but O’Brien wasn’t ready to change the design
There were space issues in the current design which weren’t resolved
Project was behind schedule for the launch in August. Production had still not started due to design issues.
2. List out the factors contributing to the team conflict?
MediSys, a U. S. -based medical equipment maker, has been developing IntensCare, a new medical system for monitoring intensive-care patients. MediSys has invested heavily in IntensCare, which is eagerly awaited by the market. The product development team, representing several functional areas of the company, has been working on the product for the past six months but is now running into significant problems with the product design, the schedule, and their own group dynamics.
Recently, the pressure increased when they learned that two more powerful competitors had begun work on their own products for this market. Several team members are concerned about meeting the team’s targets. Struggling especially hard to overcome the various problems is the marketing manager who has profit-and-loss responsibility for IntensCare.
Elaborating the factors even further ±
- Cross functional team of professionals * Stringent deadline & speeding product development
- All employees, including core team members, continued reporting to their functional managers who continued to supervise and evaluate them
- Lack f trust on the person who had joined recently, Merz in this case. Also, Merz didn’t have confidence in the competence of other core members
- All the core members were more concerned about the success of their own functional areas than the overall success of the product
- The pressure had increased because two other deep pocketed competitors had announced moving into the similar product line
- Sudden engineering problems in the product (Fitting data displays and battery units)
Difference of opinion between Merz and O’Brien.
Merz believed that customers demanded a modular design, but O’Brien’s team was more concerned about solving the internal space problems. O’Brien believed that the engineering department had no intention modules in this version of the system * Lack of coordination with the offshore software developer
3. What can Merz do now?
- She should first calm down and go and have lunch
- Over lunch, she can decide how to face the others During the meeting, she should get the facts on the table and discuss it out with everyone so that everyone’s issues are clear
- Call all the bosses and Beaumont also so that they can know what issues are faced and can take a decision as to the deadlines and work allocation.
- She should make it clear to O’Brien that she overheard what he said and doesn’t appreciate it. She should ask him to talk to her directly for any problems he might have.
