[As mentioned in a recent announcement, this assignment replaces the individual assignment originally planned to be based on the results of the Module 9 discussion forum. This change is being made to better manage student workloads for the remainder of the course.]

You are a senior project manager at a multi-national Fortune 100 company with tens of thousands of employees. The company has been in business for decades. It’s management structure is hierarchical, and the company’s culture has always promoted command-and-control management. You’ve been working at the company for several years, have successfully managed several large projects and know how to get things done.

Jennifer, who is the head of the company’s project management office, casually invites you into her office one morning after meeting you at a refreshment station. She waves you into a chair, then leans forward to speak.

“I would like your advice on a matter which I’m expected to discuss with some of the company’s senior leadership at an offsite meeting being held next month,” she begins.
“The CEO is pushing for more innovation from our product development teams. She feels that we’re facing a lot of competition from start-ups and is concerned that revenues from some of our core business lines are likely to erode if we can’t push out some new products soon.”

She continues with a sigh: “A few members of the senior executive team have asked me about ways to improve our project delivery approaches to better support innovation efforts. I’ve talked to them a few times about possibly using Scrum. While the idea of incremental / iterative development is appealing to them, most of them keep complaining about the use of self-managed teams.”

Jennifer pauses, her eyes glance around the room and then she resumes eye contact with you. “I would like your opinion, as you have worked with many project teams and people from around the company. If it were up to you, would you recommend trying to use self-managed project teams here? I’d also like to know why you feel the way you do. No matter how you feel, I would also like to know your thoughts as to what it would take to make them work here.”

Provide your thoughts on these questions in a one to two-page paper (double-spaced), using the assigned template for individual assignments. You may leverage course content, your personal experience, or content from outside sources. You should, however, write your response as though you were conducting an actual conversation with Jennifer. You may assume Jennifer understands what a self-managed team is, so you don’t have to define it for her. You should not consider her to have had access to the content on this subject discussed in the course. You may integrate material from outside sources if you wish.