question archive Covisint Technology (CT) is a medium-sized developer of electronic parts for the automotive industry
Covisint Technology (CT) is a medium-sized developer of electronic parts for the automotive industry
Subject:Project ManagementPrice: Bought3
Covisint Technology (CT) is a medium-sized developer of electronic parts for the automotive industry. Over the past 5 years, CT has grown from a small operation in Ottawa, Ontario with less than 10 employees, to its current size of 1,000 employees located in 10 offices and manufacturing facilities across Canada. The owner of Covisint Technologies is Mr. Bart Simpson.
CT had, to date, never followed any formal project guidelines or processes. All projects that were undertaken at CT were simply ad-hoc groups of people put together to try and complete the projects. Unfortunately, many of the projects undertaken were unsuccessful, in that they went overtime and/or over budget. In addition, many of the completed projects were considered by management to be failures, as the desired end product or service was usually not what was expected. Of key concern was the fact that most of the IT projects that occurred at CT were overwhelming failures, and Mr. Simpson knows that if CT is going to continue to grow, they must improve their abilities in projects overall, and certainly IT projects.
Recently, CT has realized that they do not have the in-house resources to handle new projects, both in general but more with respect to IT projects. Without these in-house resources, CT has found itself unable to complete, and in many cases start needed projects. More concerning is that in many cases even when CT has people that could be working on projects, they often do not have the knowledge, skills, and abilities to complete the project work, as it is not an area of core competence. In addition to the issues around projects, CT was having difficulties running their IT operations and their IT resources were starting to be stretched to the limit. Mr. Simpson was unsure if he wanted to invest in any more in-house IT infrastructure and software development and wondered if there was a solution for this problem.
Required:
a. How CT can improve IT projects to continue to grow?
b. What's needs to be done to build in-house IT infrastructure and software development to resolve the second issue.
Detail explanation is needed.
