Background
Volkswagen of America (VWoA) over the years has had to adapt many of its processes and business objectives to meet an ever-changing environment. VWoA has been subjected to several iterations of IT management and project guidance solutions changes and is no better for it. More recently, funding for many projects deemed high priority by business units of VWoA was cut or reduced, by selection of a committee that organized, reviewed, and prioritized all projects. With a budget of $60 million not all of the projects, in total $240 million, could be completed but the question remains - is this the right way? 1. Define acronyms BPTO, DBC, ITSC, PMO, NRG and explain.
BPTO - Business Process, Technology, and Organization. The third iteration
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ITSC - IT Steering Committee. Composed of senior business and IT representatives would guide and approve the process of IT project selection and prioritization.
PMO - Program Management Office. Manages all IT projects
NRG - Next Round of Growth. An organizational readiness program that makes the key focus of VWoA leadership. This program defined the goal, function, and organizational changes required at VWoA to support and enable the new global product diversification strategy. 2. 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?
The new process is defined to manage IT priorities efficiently and effectively. Accordingly, the process results in the selection of projects based on business requirements that support organizational goals. This is in stark contrast to the old method in which the most highly prioritized business unit projects received funding. Moreover, the new process allows for company entities to manage and to create new processes for managing priorities at
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Volkswagen AG should have a budget for overarching projects, Volkswagen of America should have an additional budget above and beyond larger corporate initiatives to support local IT and business priorities. Also, the IT department should not have its own separate budget as it should be subject to the same budget pool and selection process that the business units are. Once project budgets are approved, they are funneled through the steering committee and onto the BPTO project management group who allocates funding for IT projects and has control of the overall budget for IT projects, capping the total at $60 million
The project will bring several changes to the company; it will first expand the current physical IT environment. It will provide the ability to increase the storage capacity of the current storage requirement and expected growth of data, while establishing a new data warehouse and business analytics applications and user interfaces. The project will also improve security by establishing security policies and it will leverage newer cloud based technology to provide a highly redundant, flexible and scalable IT environment while also allowing the ability to establish a low cost disaster recovery site.
General Motors has made great progress towards diversity however, it took the lawsuit in order for the company to do so. Adding females and minority to the upper management. Had the HR department of General Motors followed the EEOC regulations, this lawsuit could have been avoided.
...sion of its plants, which resulted in an increase in production and a greater number of employees. This required the communication of too much technical detail, where it would be impossible to interact without changing their business environment. The solution to this fourth revolutionary stage is to move towards more collaboration.
Spokane Industries has contracted Franklin Electronics for an 18 month product development contract. Franklin Electronics is new to using project management methodologies and has not been exposed to earned value management methodologies. Even though Franklin and Spokane have worked together in the past, they have mainly used fixed-price contracts with little to no stipulations. For this project, Spokane Industries is requiring Franklin Electronics to use formalized project management methodologies, earned value cost schedules, and schedules for reports and meetings. Since Franklin Electronics had no experience with earned value management, the cost accounting group was trained in the methodology in order to bid for the project.
Volkswagen of America’s decision to establish and cultivate its IT through the late 1990s came at a proper time. Not only were Volkswagen’s new products hitting the American market with promise to revive the company’s brands, but also consumers were coming to expect features like e-marketing and efficient product distribution.
Businesses all over the world have responsibilities and there would be less chaos if businesses acted more responsibly. The responsibility that a business has to the general public is to protect the environment, develop a quality workforce, develop corporate philanthropy, and protect health issues. If responsibility is not taken by a business, there can be consequences. Volkswagen is dealing with a major lawsuit for being dishonest when selling their cars to the public. The public is the one who buys products, so if they public not is happy then they will lose customers, which is bad for business and eventually they could harm the business.
This case study is an analysis of the trends and mechanism of the car industry through a focus on “Porsche” which is one of the premier players in the automobile industry. This case study provides a global perspective of the automobile industry, with a focus on car industry through the premier company, Porsche. Porsche was founded in 1931 by Ferdinand Porsche, along with his son and son-in-law, Anton Piëch, father of VW Chairman Ferdinand Piëch. Known in its early days as the Porsche Engineering Office, Porsche did not start off as an automaker, but rather a firm that sold design and engineering services to other carmakers. In 1934, Adolf Hitler commissioned Porsche to make a “people’s car” or “Volkswagen.” The forerunner to the VW Beetle, the VW Type 60 hit the roads in the mid-1930s, and in 1938 the first plant dedicated to the manufacturing of the VW was opened. It wasn’t until 1948, three years after the end of World War II, that Porsche produced its first branded sports car. Within two years,...
Tesla Motors Inc. is an American public company which is known worldwide because of its experience in designing, manufacturing and also the selling of electric cars and electric components for vehicles. The motor was started back in the year 2003 in San Carlos, California in the United States (Teslamotors.com, 2014). The company had its headquarters in Palo Alto and at the time of its inception, Elon Musk was its chief executive officer (CEO) (Hunger, 2010).
Project management is said to be completed within time when it completed within the “triple constraints”: cost, time and quality. And in a lot of causes, one them is sacrificed so as to meet the other two. Project managers prioritize which ones are the most important.
Williams, (1997) identified four steps to system planning. Earl (1989) proposed five alternate strategy frameworks which project managers should consider when deciding how the system will enhance the business function. Standard business strategy methods are used to identify such opportunities by using: value chains, application searching and information analysis (Earl 1989).
By the reading of it, Volkswagen management expressed what seemed like genuine shock when the EPA and California’s Air Resources Board revealed their joint findings regarding the automaker’s manipulation of US emissions testing for diesel cars outfitted with a particular 2.0-liter, four-cylinder engine.
Most Project Managers come up through the ranks of an Information Technology (I.T.) department. They have mastered coding, testing. This experience helps prepare them to run projects, but there are still many unknowns for the new Project Manager. The official project request they receive is typically a vague, one-page list of objectives. In addition, I.T. Management cannot afford the time to guide the new Project Manager each step of the way. This paper will assist them in the initial stages of a project.
The role of a project manager has been the subject of numerous publications that have attempted to provide a precise set of qualities and responsibilities for the job title. However, the job role is so encompassing that there are still many different schools of thought on the subject and much debate over the precise terminology to best describe a project manager. This paper analyzes five such publications, and attempts to rationalize their research into a cohesive and comprehensive description of the roles of project manager. This paper establishes the roles of the project manager in the current setting in order that a newcomer to the subject matter will be able to understand the concepts as it relates to modern technology and business practices.
The defensive action is to review the daily expenses and avoid possible circumstances, which jeopardize business profits. The IT offers various possibilities to improve overhead and knowledge of consumers (Bakos, & Treacy, 1986). The loss of assistance will decrease the competitive advantage and earnings during unstable market conditions. The direction of IT increases revenue of 25% through project management software. The commitment of IT will ensure the software eliminates confusion in compliance of project expectations through progress reports, which allow progressive decisions (Stevens, 2013). This strategy paves the road by removing the task of locating facts and collecting miss-matched information.
(5) Liker, Jeffrey K. The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004. Print.