Duncan Hanes is considered one of the best design engineers for XYZ Corporation. His expertise lies in the area of heating and air conditioning controls. These controls are used to regulate the temperature to customers' desired settings throughout commercial buildings such as office buildings and manufacturing buildings. The controls consist of temperature sensors as well as the manual regulators for different areas of buildings. Whenever there is a new construction of renovation of the building each control system must be individually designed for that particular application.
After spending so much in design and gaining experience, Duncan was selected to be a project manager for a new project company just received. The project requires installing these controls while the building is under construction. The construction company is known for running aggressive schedule. The building will include office space, work space, manufacturing facility, and storage facility both for mechanical equipment and for electronic equipment. A team of nine people has been assembled by higher administration for Duncan to work with. Since controls are installed during the construction of the building, Duncan's team has to work closely with the construction company to ensure his team is available and is working at the right location at the right time.
Duncan accepts the challenge to manage the team of nine people. The team members come from diverse background in terms of age, gender, technical knowledge, and degree of experience.
During the first meeting, Duncan introduces everyone and instructs them to develop their work schedule around Construction Company's work schedule. He tells them that it is a routine work and we just do our installation and get out of the way of Construction Company. All the components for control system are ready to go and they are being stored in nearby warehouse. Since work will start in two weeks, team has enough time to review and plan for the installation of the control system. Duncan formed three groups by selecting group members based on their perceived skills and experience. At the end of the first week Duncan noticed that work is not progressing as planned. One of the group has been at the same location where construction crew was working. The Construction Company boss changed his schedule without informing Duncan. Harsh words were traded between Duncan and Construction Company's boss. Two weeks later even more problems were surfacing. Older team members did not like to work with younger team members. Older team members thought that younger members should do more work to gain experience while younger members thought older members should do more work since they are experienced and efficient. There was lots of discussion on coordination of the work. Some team members will come early while others will come late so it was difficult to stick to the work schedule.
Over the weekend Duncan start analyzing the situation. This was a routine work and should have been done without any problem. His experience as a design engineer taught him that things should go smoothly science it is not a rocket science. Duncan has provided all team members with complete instructions and technical specifications but work was falling behind and he has no idea what has gone wrong. You need to help Duncan to identify problems by performing the following:
1. List as many possible errors as you can find that Duncan has committed in forming the team and comment on the proper action needed.
2. What are some of the possible errors committed by the team members and what should have been done?
3. What can be done from the end point where Duncan realizes that the project is not progressing as planned?
4. Identify any XYZ organizational weaknesses that may have contributed to the situation.
5. Analyze the situation based on the material learned in the class to what applies correctly and what does not apply correctly.