Project Management Case and Questions

Medisys Case The team at Medisys is not performing particularly well. The team members do not communicate effectively, do not share a common vision for the product, and the project is now faced with significant delays. There is the real risk that the product delivered will not be to the expectations of either Beaumont or the market. There is no measure by which one can say this team is performing well. The real leader of the team is Beaumont.

He is the one vested with the most formal authority, and has chosen the players. Beaumont still has the ability to influence this team's performance, but has chosen to sit back. That is a choice that seems odd, but he wants the team members to prove themselves, which is why he hired a passive Fogel as team leader. The goals of the team members are not aligned with the project goals. Only Merz is genuinely being evaluated on this project. The other team members do not seem to be.

It appears that O'Brien is mostly interested in making this as easy on himself as possible -- he is not oriented to the market. Mukerjee is mostly motivated to make himself look good. Gerson may have the best potential to focus on the product. Fogel seems conflict averse. He wants to help facilitate communication, but is doing a terrible job of that. Ultimately, most people on this team are doing their own thing, focused on their own issues, and not on the market and what it needs.

Part of the problem lies with how the team members are evaluated. Merz is being evaluated on whether the product is successful or not, and this is over a three-year period. The others, however, appear to be evaluated on whether they can get this launch done on time. This is probably why they are less concerned with the market implications of their decisions -- they only care that it gets done, not whether the product is a success for the company.

Therein lies the problem with goal conflict -- nobody else is going to pay the price if the product fails, just Merz. She is understandably tense about this, seeing how the others are behaving. 2a. At this point, Merz should go to Beaumont. She has not been given formal authority on this project, and a both a newcomer and a woman she is facing a lot of resistance, some of which appears to be personal in nature.

But when the people on the team are disputing her, and not the points she is making, that is a leadership problem. Since Beaumont has the same orientation to the market that she has, and he has the most formal authority as the head of the company, she needs him to get this team back on track. 2b. Merz needs to put a case together for Beaumont. But she should go to him with her concerns, citing some specific incidences, and invite him to sit in on the next meeting.

If he sees what is going on first hand, he probably has the experience to recognize the dysfunction of this team. The newcomers have not been integrated and most people are working to their own benefit, not the company's. Beaumont needs to come in and get this team back on track -- there might not be a great leader in this bunch.

That would be unfortunate, but if it is the case that Fogel's leadership style is taking this project down a bad path, Merz needs to cut that short -- this company is too small for a failed launch, and Beaumont is the only one who can hold all of the different team members responsible. Part 2. The funny thing about Healthcare.gov is that it was actually the second choice for Oregon. The state had intended to start its own exchange, called CoverOregon.

It cost the state $248 million before it was closed and users in the state told to use the federal system instead. There were myriad problems with OregonCover. It was a website that couldn't register people -- users had to register with paper first, before they could even use the site. The point of CoverOregon was to partner with insurance companies, but also to offer a system that was more feature-rich than the federal system (Manning 2014). The software for the site was developed in-house by the Oregon government.

The state had some sort of vision for the features the site would have, but ultimately did not have the ability to execute on this vision. The site was never particularly functional, not able to perform basic functions. It was rolled out to the public without being ready. The website mainly was able to reach Medicaid users who registered manually. The entire effort was.