Intenscare Project Case

I believe that the team assembled for the IntensCare project did not have any conflicting or competing goals within their group. Rather it seemed that everyone on the team was on the same page. They were given a deadline by the president, Art Beaumont, and everyone seemed to want to work hard to complete the project by that deadline. Their goals might have been the same but that doesn't mean the project ran smoothly.

In my opinion, the IntensCare project team had a diverse set of skills that every team needs to be effective and successful. Each team member had graduated from a good school and has had experience working at different companies before they came to MediSys. Most of them were also given high praise from their previous employers. All the team members, except Valerie Merz, had worked for MediSys over 5 years and should be familiar with each other. They seem to fit perfectly together and the project looks like it should be a piece of cake for these highly skilled professionals. The team's downfall came from bad communication and a bad choice for the team leader.

The real team leader of the entire group is Valerie Merz and not Jack Fogel. Valerie was a new external hire who was specifically brought into the company for the new IntensCare project. "Managing this as a business was Merz's sole assignment for the next three years." She had one focus and it was on the IntensCare project, while the other team members had several different projects to deal with at the same time. Merz has had experience leading two other projects before coming to MediSys and she recognized that Jack Fogel was not the right person to lead this team. Merz was responsible for technical support to customers, pricing, advertising, sales promotion and the project launch. Therefore, Merz's position was the last step before finalizing the project and if there were any major problems anywhere along the line, the responsibility ultimately fell on her shoulders. Valerie was given all the responsibility for the project but had no authority to tell others what to do. I believe she could have easily kept the team members in line. If Valerie Merz were given the team leader title, the IntensCare project would have run smooth all the way to the project release in August 2009.

The main issue that caused most of the problems for the team was bad communication. All teams need to communicate to be successful, whether it is a sports team or a reality TV show team (I think this is what you mean by reality TV show). Without good communication the project is going to fail. From the start, Bret O'Brien knew that the deadline for this project would be very steep for his engineering department to complete on time, but he never told anyone. Most team members had problems with Valerie Merz because she tried to take control. If Valerie were given the team leader name then everyone would not be getting mad at her