Capacity Management in a Multi-Project Internet Development Environment: Harnessing the Demand Wave

:

Operations Management Assignment

Capacity Management in a Multi-Project Internet Development Environment: Harnessing the Demand Wave

Student: MBA Programme: Name of Module: Name of Lecturer: Date of Submission: Number of Words:

11029501 MBA PT Utrecht Operations Management Mr M. Afferson MSc March 6 2012 3494

th

1

Introduction

This paper is an investigation of the capacity management challenges within a multi-project internet development environment. The context for this paper is an internet agency for which I am currently employed which designs and develops websites, online systems and portals for numerous external clients. This paper is aimed at an actual capacity management problem from which the context organisation suffers. The increasing complexity en importance of modern online systems and websites has increased the attention towards the management of the projects that deliver these systems (Simon, 2006). Because of the large attention that traditional software development projects have received in the literature, a lot of the available literature is concerned with managing individual projects (Midler, 1995). Less is however published concerning organizations that have to manage multiple of these complex projects and these organizations should manage its capacity (Engwall and Jerbrant, 2002; Canonico and Söderlund, 2010). In this assignment, we will analyse the capacity management problem of our context organization to get a better understanding of the underlying causes of these perceived challenges. This is followed by a literature survey of possible measures which might counter the undesired effects.

2

Background

The internet development industry is a fairly new industry which has emerged together with the internet itself and is transforming until this day. The internet has become an important business and marketing channel for many (if not all) companies and modern internet sites can be very sophisticated on a technological...