Volkswagen of America: Managing It Priority Case Study Assignment

Volkswagen of America: Managing IT Priority Case Study Assignment

Assignment Questions

Question 1

What is your assessment of the new process for managing priorities at Volkswagen of America? Are the criticisms justified? Is it an improvement over the old process?

Dr. Uwe Matulovic, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Volkswagen of America had to deal with two primary concerns: Defining Governance & Establishing Development Process Directives.

Matulovic faces inadequate funding, new business architecture, and increasing pressure from his peers. Volkswagen has a history of viewing IT as a source of overhead expenditures and these circumstances did not come as a surprise. Matulovic’s biggest hurdle to overcome was the capped funding determined by Volkswagen’s parent company. Volkswagen requested $210 million, but was only allotted $60 million for IT projects. Given the scope of Volkswagen’s initiatives, this amount is far short of what was needed.

A new prioritization process was implemented to determine which IT projects will receive funding. This process for managing IT priorities is part of a new business architecture designed to align organizational activity with corporate goals and strategy. As with any new initiative, this process experienced some significant growing pains, especially in its inability to capture “behind the curtain” programs such as the intercontinental Supply Flow project.

The new IT priority management process was driven by the new IT budget constraint given to Volkswagen by the parent company VWAG. If the new budgetary constraint was not initiated, it is likely that elements of the former less organized and less centralized method would be maintained. In the end, this may benefit the individual business units, but be detrimental to the business as a whole. In creating the new process, Matulovic enabled the business unit managers to work together to make the decisions that would affect their departments using the overall...