Team Reflection

I always considered team work among our teams as our strength within the Information technology (IT) department in our organization. This attribute in addition to my teams system and business expertise, and dedication in developing custom software applications have resulted in several successful product launches.

In our organization the drastic change in the landscape of retail business triggered the need for a new software system to handle the critical business functions and to tightly integrate with other existing software systems. It became clear that the current legacy retail system wasnt scalable to the expectation of the business units. As a result, the senior director of retail business development, along with the backing of the revenue committee, initiated a request to our CIO and IT director to implement a complete software system to cater the needs of the retail department. This initiative later became a top priority for our department and my team to implement this product within a limited time and budget.

A reputed Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software package was chosen as the solution and since my team had no expertise on this package, the management decided to assemble a project manager and few developers to implement this hybrid product. Although the new project manager who was brought in was new to the organization, she had worked closely with our IT director at his previous job. In the beginning of the project things were moving well and my group was on top of this project, but as months went by, there was a clearly a disconnect between the teams and it was evident in the progress of the project as the other team was behind schedule and missed to follow the specifications. During project meetings, we wer...

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...tise to the project, scarce resources and uncertainty.

Based on how things played out, I don't think I could have done anything to diffuse the climate between the two teams, unless I had the positional or referent power as the other manager did. Unfortunately, I think my team was placed in an awkward position with a high expectation that was set without the required technical skills which ended up as a blow to our reputation and track record. To prevent this from happening again, I feel that we absolutely require someone who is cross-functional to co-ordinate the efforts between teams, especially when expertise of each of the teams varies significantly. Although this would be a hrd sell, given the political situation, I'll make it a point to advocate for such a setup which in turn will work out in the best interest of my organization.