You are in IT management/leadership team in a medium size IT organization and are responsible for three engineering teams. Your teams are implementing about 15-20 projects per year for the company, and also provide support and maintenance of current systems. While your teams have been successful in project delivery overall, you have to constantly shift people from project to project to meet multiple competing timelines, the engineers are overworked and stressed, and any small delay or problem impacts multiple project deliveries. Your engineers are also reminding you that some of the core technologies your systems are built on are getting old and will need upgrades or completely different technical approaches. Their preliminary analysis also shows that upgrading or replacing core technologies will result in the need to reengineer some of your existing systems, so that teams can better support current and future projects as well as take advantage of the new technologies.

A new CIO has recently joined your company and has assembled a committee to determine and prioritize the necessary changes in IT processes, technologies, and approaches to project delivery. You have been invited to participate in this committee to provide your and your teams’ perspectives as input to upcoming operational strategy changes.

As you reflect on the day-to-day issues your teams are facing, you note the following trends:

retesting. In some cases, there is no choice but to upgrade, as vendors announce plans to retire your versions of their products. In other cases, you have some flexibility on the timing of the upgrade, and wonder about the relative costs of upgrading vs. falling behind on the technology curve. Your engineers bring up various opportunities and advantages of switching to new technologies or the latest versions of the vendor products. You are wondering how you can balance the cost and impact of continuous technology changes with the need to deliver new projects and maintain/enhance current systems.Your Challenge:

What changes in the current operational strategy can you propose to the new CIO, as your input to

operational strategy committee? Please address the following topics in your response:

o An aggressive strategy can be a major change to the current processes and ways of operating. It may also have major impacts on the organization in terms of restructuring, changing people roles/responsibilities, major changes to how work is done, or major cost impacts.

o A balanced strategy may be an introduction of some changes to the current processes and operating strategy, with less impact and disruption compared to an aggressive strategy. It may also be a phased introduction of the some or all elements of the aggressive strategy.

o A moderate strategy may have some incremental changes to the current processes and operating strategy, while leaving most of the current way of operating as is. A moderate strategy aims to minimize changes and disruptions, while introducing gradual improvements.

o Please consider the overall impact of your recommendations for the organization – if you are recommending aggressive strategy changes in all areas, there will be major changes in the work processes, with higher improvement potential. If all recommendations are moderate, the changes will be minimized, but the positive impact may not be sufficient. What is the right combination? How well is your company prepared to deal with recommended changes?

Create your response to this challenge as a proposal you will submit to operational strategy committee. Format your response as an APA paper and include a bibliography with references/sources you have consulted in preparing your proposal.