Introduction
MediSys Corporation was incorporated in 2002 in the United States and manufactured medical monitoring solutions and devices for the internal medicine and general practice markets. The company achieved significant success with the release of their first two monitoring systems and became very profitable, and at the same time was relatively small and characterized by a strong entrepreneurial culture.
The medical device industry in the United States demonstrates continuous growth, and by 2019 it is expected to reach one hundred seventy-three billion dollars. After the introduction of the Affordable Care Act, healthcare services became more affordable and accessible to a larger population. Moreover, there is a growing number of aging people and patients with chronic diseases, and these are the reasons for incessant demand for technological advancement in healthcare.
The IntensCare project started as an idea of an employee to create a patient monitoring system that could accumulate data on patients in intensive care in an individual profile and would send the information to relevant specialists. He involved his friends from sales and design groups in investigating this opportunity further, and as a result, gathered a team working on the project informally. After a year of their research, the senior leaders supported and funded their initiative, but this project was not the priority of the company. Thus, employees involved in IntenseCare often had to devote most of the working hours to other projects in their functional areas.
After another year, the new president Art Beaumont intended to accelerate the process formalized the full team, and set a challenging deadline for the project because two competitors announced the release of similar products. The team made significant progress in the first six months, but then there was an expected delay of the software, which was being produced in India, engineers could not meet the demands of the marketing, a lack of time for testing. Furthermore, there was an additional question about adding modules to the system, which was crucial for marketing but was not discussed in detail with other team leaders.
Identify and discuss two organizational issues you feel are negatively impacting MediSys’ ability to deliver the IntensCare project.
Despite the attempts of the president to replace the old sequential approach to product development with the new parallel system, which suggests that each group should not defend their interests but evaluate the bigger picture, every group remains more concerned about their scope of responsibilities. Introducing a new team design, which requires different ways of thinking and behaving, for a project that is already underway, does not give time to the team members to adapt to the requirements and meet the new standards. Contrary to Beaumont’s expectations, the parallel development process does not help the teams to relate to the whole scope of problems and consider them as equally important. Everyone has their view on key issues, which might affect the quality of the end product.
The project leaders do not cooperate and discuss crucial questions and are ready to overlook the interests of other departments, and this is the second issue that affects the deliverance of the IntensCare project.
Do you feel the IntensCare project is well defined? What would you have done differently in launching its product development?
The details of the Project lack thorough discussion, and this state of affairs exists for a long period until the team reaches the point where they can no longer ignore all the inconsistencies. For example, several project leaders express their concern about offshore development in India and give reasons why this decision is not rational. All the teams see regulatory norms as a predicament and not as a tool that guarantees the safety, quality, and success of the product and thinks that it is possible to neglect this part of the development. Moreover, the timeline is too tight and does not imply that there can be mistakes or delays in the process.
I would have planned backup solutions for key points in the development process that would allow for more flexibility and prevent situations when a single delay or a change in the initial design puts the whole project at risk.
The design of the IntensCare team itself was not well-considered; identify three 3 contributing factors to team conflict.
Only two people from the initial team that started the project are included in the final stage of production. It would be more efficient to leave the project with people who have already devoted a lot of their time to the idea and let them finish their work. The team of leaders includes two newcomers to the company, and it puts pressure on them to demonstrate their abilities and do their best, while the rest of the team seems to be more relaxed about the project’s deadline and success. Both software design and marketing managers need time to establish trustful and effective business relations with the rest of the team under the pressing deadline.
As a result, the leaders do not cooperate as much as they should and decide important problems in private conversations. The marketing manager and IntenseCare business leader have a lot of responsibilities across different departments but no authority to control and get reports from the staff. Thus, she finds herself in a position when she depends on all other leaders but cannot act and motivate other people to accomplish her goals.