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Moving at E-Speed (Case A & B)
Michelle Linton, Tupper Cawsey
published: 2006 | Case Study | Business Policy/Strategic Mgmt
Subject Area: Small Business/Entrepreneurship; Business Policy/Strategic Management; Organizational Behaviour
Key Issues: E-business start-up; Interpersonal conflict; Entrepreneurship; Control in organizations
Case Description: Case A: Simon, a Galaxy Consulting
senior manager, is working with ProcessAbility, a start-up e-commerce
company, to roll out their first release of functionality to their
pilot customers. ProcessAbility's value proposition is to broker
intellectual property to process owners and process consultants
globally via the internet. ProcessAbility wants to move at "eSpeed" and
release all capabilities as quickly as possible with the expectation
that they can keep adding "critical functionality" to Release 1 because
"that's how start-ups do it". ProcessAbility has no change control
processes or the discipline to realize the major problems they are
creating for themselves (organizationally, customer expectations,
process-wise, etc.). Simon must determine how to slow down the rollout
and how to work with ProcessAbility to set up defined scope, rigorous
change control processes, and a governance structure. Case B: Simon
conducts an urgent planning meeting to raise the issues to the joint
ProcessAbility and Galaxy Consulting executive team and to convince
them to re-define scope and slow down the release plan. He also
proposes a governance structure and change control process to manage
future change requests. Simon successfully convinces ProcessAbility to
re-set their release plan and implement these processes by using unique
e-commerce management skills such as ability to break major rollouts
into multiple, concurrent releases, discipline to "go slow to go fast",
ability to educate on the value of governance structure and program
management.
# Case Pages: A-5; B-2
Case Number: 030050-G
Teaching Note: Yes
revised May 31/06
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