INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP BEHAVIOUR

CASE STUDY ON MEDISYS CORP: THE

INTENSCARE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
TEAM

SUBIMTTED BY:
SURYA BHARTI
P40045
MEDISYS CORP: THE INTENSCARE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT TEAM

SITUATIONAL ANALYSIS:
Medisys Corp was a United States based medical devices manufacturer founded in 2002 with
an annual revenue of $400 million. It’s first two products pulmonary and renal monitoring
systems were highly successful. The company experienced a small profit but the board of
medisys saw signs of slowness in growth. To counter this issue, they hired Art Beaumont as
president to re-stimulate rapid growth. He created an executive committee consisting of his
five direct reports: the vice presidents of sales and marketing, research & development,
design and engineering, production and administration. In 2008 he also introduced a new
parallel system for product development in which a “core team” of people assembled from all
the five critical functions. Beaumont also an additional investment of $20 million to the rapid
development of IntensCare which meant the organization was exposed to high financial risks.
IntensCare is a patient monitoring system that would collect data on patient in intensive care
unit. It would then post it to an integrated profile of an individual patient’s health. It would
also send an email message to various physicians and nurses. The team was facing internal
issues as well as external issues. At Management level there were internal issues which arose
due to changing in working pattern of senior staff after the appointment of Beaumont as the
whole system transformed, it was difficult for many staffs to get accustomed to this new
pattern. Also managers were accustomed to functional roles despite of entrepreneurial
culture. The management also found difficulties in managing the staff as it has been seen that
Bret O’Brien who was the lead engineer had two engineers who reported to him while
working full time on IntensCare but due to recent recession driven companywide cutbacks
those engineers had to now split their time between IntensCare and other projects which
meant low workforce for this ongoing project and with deadlines getting closer it would be
very difficult for medisys to get the work done with proper precision and good quality. Also
Merz describes herself as a mini-manager because she thought Jack was not contributing to
the project as a team lead and she wondered what he was doing as a part of this team. She
was also worried was Dipesh was doing because he was working from India and there was no
one to have a look on the work of Offshore team. As a team there were few internal issues as
well like absence of trust amongst other team members as it was relevant from Merz’s
reaction that she was not trusting Dipesh who was the Lead for the Offshore team as there
was no one to inspect their work also she didn’t have any trust in the newly formed team as
Jack was not at all contributing to the team according to her so it became very difficult for her
to show some trust on her employees. Due to this reason Project’s main goal was getting
affected as there was no proper scheduling of testing the software designed for this product
because the deadlines were very close and it seemed that they might have to compromise
with the product’s quality. There were some of the pre-existing obstacles in the organizations
which hampered team’s performance, like Baio who was the lawyer for the organization was
seen as an obstructionist by most of her teammates and she also thought that Dipesh and
Merz were very difficult to tolerate so with this type of conflicts existing it would be
extremely difficult to work and for some newcomer it would be a situation where he would
be forced to create a negative stereotype against Baio.
Being a manager Mayer should have implemented following things:
1) She should have organized a meeting everyday with Dipesh to get an update on the
progress of the software development as he was the one responsible for it and he was
operating from offshore.
2) She should have talked with Jack about the responsibilities he should have taken and
clearly stated him the kind of work which was expected from him.
3) She should have gone and talked to each time and clearly divide the work into small
groups and provide a deadline for the same so that everyone in the organization was
aware of the progress and it would also help everyone estimate the amount of work
which was to be done by each individual.
4) She should have motivated everyone about the success and recognition this project
would provide them once it is completed.
Once she would have done the above things there would have been less chances of conflicts
in the team and also there would be a sense of responsibility everyone would feel.