Description
I’m working on a engineering case study and need the explanation and answer to help me learn.I am currently engaged in an engineering case study that requires a deeper understanding, and I am seeking guidance to facilitate my learning process.The task is related to a course focused on the leadership and management of engineering teams. To fulfill the requirements of this assignment, it is essential to thoroughly examine the article provided and follow the specified guidelines. The case study includes five questions which are centered around the unique aspects of leadership within engineering groups. It is imperative to address each question comprehensively.
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ISE 544
Leading and Managing Engineering Teams
Prof. Ali Nowroozi
Spring 2024
Case #2
DUE: 02/25/2023 11.59 PM
(75 Points)
PLEASE READ INSTRUCTIONS WITHOUT FAIL!
Instructions:
1. Answer all the questions in this file. Do not delete the questions. Type in your answers
below the questions. It’s a graduate-level course, so formatting should not be an issue. We
are not going to be strict about formatting, just write answers below the questions, you can
modify (add/delete) spaces according to you.
2. We expect precise and succinct answers. Add citations, references, and screenshots
wherever necessary.
3. Follow the deadline for submission. Late submissions will not be accepted and will receive
a zero.
4. Name the file as the last four digits of your USC ID and submit it as a PDF. (For Example,
you must name it 1234.pdf if your USC ID is XXXXXX1234)
5. Not following the instructions will result in penalties.
All the best!!
ISE 544
Leading and Managing Engineering Teams
Prof. Ali Nowroozi
Spring 2024
GUIDELINES
The case study report should be no more than 3 pages in length, 10-12 pt type, 1.5 space, with
1″ margins. Paragraphs should not be longer than 10 lines. The case study should include the
following:
1. Brief introduction (1 paragraph). Describe Honeywell Building Controls Division’s (BCD) main
goal(s), as outlined in the case study.
2. Your diagnosis of the case. (2 paragraphs) The case outlines several major challenges that
BCD faces in trying to meet the above goals. What are some of these key issues?
a. Describe i) the key project challenges that relate to marketing, technology, manufacturing,
project scheduling, and/or finance, and ii) the key team challenges that relate to team structure,
dynamics, and/or communication.
b. Explain how you would relate each of the above mentioned challenges directly and
specifically to one of the course topics (as far as covered so far). You can pick from the
examples below (not exclusive / exhaustive):
3. Recommendations for the case. (2 paragraphs)
How would you change the way teams are organized or managed to address the above
challenges you described in your answer to question 2?
4. Brief conclusion (1 paragraph) that summarizes your case study report.
You are expected to reference theories and models discussed in classroom lectures where
appropriate. Please avoid just making general comments purely based on personal
feelings/experiences with no reference to the course material. Also avoid repeating the facts of
the case and/or the lectures/text books contents. Instead, focus on the analysis, diagnosis and
rationale for the plan of action. Your case study reports will be graded based on the richness of
analysis/diagnosis and the creativity and soundness of your recommendations. You need to show
how well you learned the course material and how well you can apply them to real world
environment.
Your approach to your term projects should be similar to this: Learn from this exercise at
your individual level, apply the methods at your team level
ISE 544
Leading and Managing Engineering Teams
Prof. Ali Nowroozi
Spring 2024
Some questions to stimulate your thought process:
1. How do you reconcile competing goals; individual, interdepartmental, intra-teams, etc?
How do you develop/restore teamwork?
2. What problems can be diagnosed in one of the product development teams? How could
it be cured?
3. What dilemmas these different teams were facing and how they could be looked at as
paradoxes? What could be the “Genius of And” solution?
Think of these questions just as stimuli, YOU ARE NOT ASKED TO ANSWER THESE
QUESTIONS DIRECTLY. YOU WILL LOSE POINTS IF YOU JUST DO THAT. Your primary
job is to analyze the cases and relate your diagnosis to up to 3 class topics (NO MORE), and then
offer a solution. Some examples topics (you may choose different ones):
● Jim Collins Core Ideology model: Goals alignment
● Team / Organization Structure
● Performance models: Performance Equation, Hackman & Oldham, Descriptive /
Prescriptive, Flow model, Team Performance curve,
● Team design characteristics: Type of work, SMARTness of the project goals,
● Team Diversity / Team fragmentation
● Team / Organization Culture
● Team / sub-teams mind, TMS, biases, etc.
● Inter-team / Intra-team feedback
● Inter-team / Intra-team completion / cooperation Conflict / Cohesion
● Lencioni Models: The 5 Dysfunctions model , the ideal team player model
● Leadership, empowerment, effective intervention, etc.
● Perceptual process, influence & distortion factors
● The 2D Creativity Model
● Bonus (10% of grade): meaningful and innovative application of chaos theory
Harvard Business School
9-491-030
Rev. March 5, 1991
Mod IV Product Development Team
It was April 1989. Just four months remained until the Honeywell Building Controls
Division (BCD) planned to introduce the Mod IV, and the product development team was
fighting to stay on schedule. Mod IV, a motor used in heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning
(HVAC) applications, represented the most ambitious project in the division’s history, and the
product’s development reflected many of the changes the division had experienced in recent years.
For three people in particular, Mod IV also typified the challenges of working amid new pressures
and demands.
As director of HVAC Controls, one of the Building Controls Division’s four product areas,
Linda Whitman was the senior marketing person for the Mod IV product line and had primary
profit and loss responsibility for Mod IV. She could see the impact a delay would have on her
area’s performance, and she understood the pressing market need to have Mod IV contain
attractive features. When she first became director of HVAC Controls in 1986, she realized that
marketing had to playa more active role in development of Mod IV. Since then she had watched
her fellow marketers on the Mod IV team work through problems and conflicts with engineers,
and she knew some of the most difficult issues still had to be resolved. But addressing any issue
required patience, persistence, and tact, and even then Linda often found herself tom. She had
to make sure HVAC Controls met its projections, which required collaborating with engineering
and manufacturing, both of which seemed at times overburdened and at times unresponsive.
Larry Rodgers, lead design engineer on Mod IV, had been involved in the Mod IV project
for five years. He could sense the pressure mounting both on the team and on the division as
Mod IV encountered difficulties entering the final months of the project. Larry and six of the
engineers he supervised had their hands full trying to reduce the noise the Mod IV motor was
generating. He knew the marketers had concerns about Mod IV’s appeal to customers, but with
BCD’s limited resources and its stress on fast development, he wondered how he could address
himself to marketing’s concerns at this time. Like many engineers at BCD, Larry understood the
competitive and financial challenges BCD faced, but he wondered if others appreciated the depth
and complexity of design work and engineering problems.
ResearchAssociate Joshua D. Margolis prepared this case under the supervision of Professor Anne Donnellon as the basis for
class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation. Figures in this case
have been disguised.
Copyright © 1990 by the President and Fellows of HalVard College. To order copies, call (617) 495-6117 or write the
Publishing Division, HalVard Business School, Boston, MA 02163. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by any means–electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise-without the permission of HalVard Business School.
Mod IV Product Development Team
491-030
John Bailey, general manager of BCD, could all but hear the footsteps of competitors
eager to grab business from his division. Although he bristled at the thought of a delay and its
effect on BCD’s ability to meet corporate financial targets,! he wanted to respect the team’s
autonomy. John knew the team was grappling with several troublesome issues, and though he
focused his attention on making sure the division met its objectives, he wanted to find ways to
support the team as it addressed the problems before it.
Building Controls Division
Honeywell Building Controls Division (BCD) produced climate controls and systems for
four market areas: HVAC, burners and boilers, lighting, and water products. BCD employed 1250
people and recorded 1988 sales of more than $150 million. The division dealt with two types of
customers, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and trade customers. The OEMs
incorporated Honeywell products into their own products, which they in tum sold to the market.
Trade customers sold Honeywell products directly to the market. BCD placed highest priority on
the quality of its products, on the division’s flexibility, and on its response to customers. The
division’s profitability and return on investment-both well above industry averages-were points
of pride.
1981 marked the first and only year in Honeywell’s history that its Residential and Building
Controls Division lost money. Controls were Honeywell’s original business, and the shock of 1981
brought new management to this division, management determined to regain Honeywell’s
competitive edge. As part of the recovery process, Honeywell split residential and building
controls into two separate divisions, thus creating the Building Controls Division. To end the days
when people from engineering, manufacturing, and marketing/sales worked in different locations,
a new building was constructed with enough room to house everyone. To integrate the three
major functional areas, BCD introduced a series of changes that intertwined to create a new form
of product development. BCD hoped to transform itself into an agile organization capable of
outmaneuvering competitors through faster development.
Product Development and the Controls Business
In the old system of product development, the product passed through each functional
area in a sequence of discrete steps: marketers conceived of a product idea and passed it along
to design engineers, who would design the product and pass the design to process engineers;
process engineers determined how to make the product and then dropped the plans into the laps
of the manufacturing engineers and the plants. At each stage in the sequence, people
encountered problems created by work done at earlier stages. Process engineers, for example,
would discover they could not make what the design engineers had crafted. Product development
thus became a game of “tossing the bear over the wall.” When you completed your particular
piece of the project, you tossed it over the wall to the next group, not caring what took place on
1. A widely-cited economic model developed by McKinsey and Company “calculates that going 50% over budget
during development to get a product out on time reduces … profits by only 4%. But staying on budget and getting to
market six months late reduces profits by a third.” (David Woodruff and Stephen Phillips, “A Smarter Way to
Manufacture,” Business Week, April 30, 1990, p.ll1. See also Brian Dumaine, “How Managers Can Succeed Through
Speed,” Fortune, February 13, 1989.)
2
Mod. IV Product Development Team
491-030
the other side. If you had problems with work done at previous stages, you made your changes
and tossed the design back to the previous group for them to adjust their work. The process was
slow and costly. Every change meant more time, higher cost, and heightened animosity between
functional areas.
But rapid changes in the controls business inspired the division to look for new
approaches. John Bailey explained:
In the early 1980s the move to electronics and microelectronics was
accelerating, and we were having a. hard time dealing with that by using
engineering and manufacturing techniques that had evolved over one-hundred
years and were slighted toward a really slow-moving industry and slow-moving
technology. To suddenly get into a cycle going from products that you could
design and have on the line for thirty years, to three years life expectancy-well,
we couldn’t do a development in three years. So there was a big need for change
imposed on us by technology and by the new competitors that technology brought
into the market.
We went from a period of a really stable competitive environment, with two
or three players, to at one point in the early 1980s we counted 160
competitors-150 of them were little electric assembly shops, where a couple of
engineers would get together, layout a circuit board, stuff it, and start selling.
A few of those competitors grew up, prospered, and became viable. They grew
out of that change in technology. But it meant we had to change.
We had to change for many reasons. We were coming out of a period when we
weren’t profitable enough. We were changing because we were going from part of
a division to a stand-alone division. Our competitive environment was changing,
technology was changing, and our customers were demanding a different set of
requirements from us. So there was no alternative but to change.
Parallel Development and Teams
When BCD abandoned sequential development in the mid-1980s, it embraced a new
process called “parallel development.” In this system, a core team of people assembled from the
three critical functions-manufacturing, marketing/sales, and engineering2-worked together to
guide a project from the conceptual stage all the way through final production. People still
reported to their functional managers, who continued to supervise and evaluate all employees, and
each functional area continued to perform its specialized role on the project; yet all areas now
worked on the same project simultaneously. The core team guided and tracked the development,
coordinating efforts across functions and addressing issues of mutual concern. A program
manager secured resources for the team, orchestrated its work, kept an eye on the complete
project, and served as a liaison to senior managers. One BCD employee described the personal
effect the new approach had:
The team system does not allow people to single-mindedly defend the
position of their functional area, of what’s easiest, or best, or cheapest for
their own functional area. It forces people to look at a bigger picture.
2. “Engineering,” when used alone, refers to both product and process engineering.
3
491-038
Mod IV Product o.velopment Team
As BCD made the transition to parallel development, it had· to confront· its hjstory and
discanl old habits. Marketing had always enjoyed a· sa.cred .position at BCD, as John Bailey
explained: “Marketing called all the shots, controlled the purse strings. Engineering felt it worked
for marketing.” To make the team-system work, Bailey and his senior staff felt they would have
to cr~te parity among the functional groups. Each area had to see itself as an equal.partner and
con~lmto17. People had to accept additional responsibility’ — responsibility for the success of the
entire project, not just for their functional role. Team members now had to attend team meetings
whether relevant to their functional area or not. A manufacturing engineer, for example, had to
attend team meetings evell if the project. was on~ at. a design stage. Since people were
accustom~ simp~ to completing a task and passing the project on, they felt team meeth)gs stole
timeftQm doing actual work and added to total work-load. As people gradually adapted to
par.ulel development and teams, they continued to struggle with their expanded roles and
respansibilities.
Many people at BCD felt the new product development system exerted too much pressure
on them. Because people now worked on projects from beginning to end, not just when their
piece had to be done, they had multiple projects to juggle at once. Combined with· the· emphasis
on fast development, this· at times overwhelmed BCD employees. Several people described the
pressures they felt and what they perceived to be their sources:
We have to make a decision on the deployment of resources. When
it comes to choosing between things to do, the answer from above is, ‘Do
both’-with no added resources. Or if we get additional resources, we’re
just stealing them from another project.
The system is heavily loaded, especially since we’re learning a new way
of working. There are many things to do with little headcount and no
relief with the project schedule. Engineering doesn’t have a realistic
schedule. This puts stress on the system.
Teams could help but there are obstacles to having a team work on
a project You need true support from management. If somebody’s
supposed to be dedicated to a team, management has to be willing to let
that person spend all of his or her time on the project. Logistics also
need work. You have to be able to work out the fractions of people’s
time. You need one fully dedicated person from each function, but you
also rely on the entire functional group. So people working on multiple
projects have to know how to split their time. How do you prioritize
projects? All work is high priority. And how do you reward people?
Even John Bailey recognized he would have to alter his management style.
The tone of the way the division is managed comes right from the
top. If I want teams, and I promote ’em and cultivate them, then there
will be teams. If I’m going to dictate orders, then that’s the way my staff
will act- dictate orders. I mean those things get reflected right through
an organization because I think people look up to see what’s happening,
and if you don’t lead by example, then you’re not going to get what you
want. People watch actions more than words.
4
~can’t be autocr~canddictatorial to
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