Kate Austin
Dr. Crews
SM 300
3 February 2013
Case Study 1 “MegaTech, Inc”
Question 1: What is it about project management that offers MegaTech a competitive advantage in its
industry?
Megatech gains a competitive edge in the industry through project management through several
aspects of this tremendously helpful aspect of business tricks. Project management seems to be an easy
thing to define, but behind these two simple words stands a mountain of information that guides these
words to drive anyone using this principle for success.
To start off, on page 8 of our text book, it goes into many reasons why projects are important.
These reasons are listed following this sentence. First of all, shorten product life cycles; meaning that to
keep up with other companies in this industry you must come out with the new innovations at a quicker
rate than that of your competitors. Secondly, narrow product launch windows; this is referring to there is
an optimum window to launch a new idea and make the most money off the idea; this window starts to
shrink after a limited amount of time. Thirdly, increasingly complex and technical products; this means
that if Megatech releases an update for one of their models this year they must begin immediately to plan
for the next one to be “the next big thing”. There are a couple more reasons why projects are important,
but this gives you the idea of why they are important. If Megatech can, and seems to be doing, become
efficient at these keys aspects of projects they will be a leader in their industry.
Along with what was stated above, project management serves a basis of great training for future
senior executives and management. Page 11 of our book states projects can be broken down into two
main areas: technical and behavioral. The technical side of projects are just that methodical. They focus
on things such as project selection, budgeting and resource management, planning and scheduling. On the
other hand you have the behavioral side of projects; this side of projects are the people side. This aspect
focuses on bringing the people and employees around the company together in order to mold them into
effective teams in order to accomplish a common goal or task at hand.
Megatech stays in front of the competitive market for their industry by doing everything listed
above, and then some. They started out rough as it is stated in the case study, but due to the time invested
in project management and experience in the field they are making the rough transition slowly but surely.
Also by leading their company to utilize project management, they also made a commitment to training
their personnel (from managers to senior managers) in how to effectively use this tool of the industry.
Question 2: What elements of the marketplace in which MegaTech operates led the firm to believe that
project management would improve its operations?
Globalization made Megatech look at their company plan and realize that the company had inefficiencies.
MegaTech needed to streamline existing operations, embrace new technologies, seek new markets, and
respond quickly to change due to a dramatic increase of competitors in a short amount of time. As, the
global economy moved into the market that the company was marketing the company had to make a
decision to keep up with their competition.
Project management would prepare them to introduce innovative ways of producing their various
products that better met their customer’s needs and identify future requirements for new products. Instead
of just trying to keep up with the demand of the industry they started project managing in order to work
towards future ideas and jumping ahead of the rest of the competition. In order to stay a lap ahead of
everyone else you must utilize project management and start looking for the next big thing in order to
satisfy the demand for your product and set your product apart from the rest of the opposition.