Case analysis: MediSys Corp.

: The IntensCare Product Development Team

Situation Analysis

MediSys Crop. is a privately held US-based medical device manufacture who started a new project,
named IntensCare, in 2006. IntensCare aimed to collect data on patients in intensive care units and post
it to a database to share. The launch time was scheduled in August 2009. Six months away from the
launch date, the project team still faced many issues that seemed they would not launch the project on
time. In August 2008, the new present, Art Beaumont, formalized a core team, which was organized by a
new parallel system for the IntensCare project. It included six people from six different departments:
Karen Baio-Regulatory Affairs; Jack Fogel-Senior Production Manager; Aaron Gerson-R&D; Valerie Merz-
Marketing Manager; Dipesh Mukerjee-Software Design; and Bret O’Brien-Product Engineering. Fogel
also assigned as a project leader.

In the current situation, the project team faced two direct delays. First, they were “running into some
serious engineering problem trying to fit the data displays and battery units into the customer size specs
marketing provided” (Donnellon & Margolis, 2009, p. 4). Second, the Indian software design firm which
was the outsourcing firm of IntenseCare project would delay their delivery. Both problems seemed
would trigger a big delay of the project. However, two well-known pubic competitors “had announced
they were moving into MediSys’s key markets with products

Organizational Behavior (MGT 304)

deliver at cost and on time, and regulatory’s was to throw roadblocks in front of everyoneelse. 3. Three
concepts that lead to team effectiveness include context, composition, and process. For the context
section for determining team effectiveness, adequate resources, leadership and structure, climate of
trust, and performance evaluation & reward systems are necessary. In this case, the MediSys IntensCare
product development team seemed to lack a good leadership and structure because Jack Fogel, the
team leader, seemed to be too concerned with the product, and too little concerned with the business
issues and impending launch. Climate of trust seemed to be an issue that was lacking between the team
members since the members were worried about the time line and aggressive goals and did not trust or
were not confident with each other in meeting those goals. For the composition section of team
effectiveness, abilities of the members, personality, allocating roles, size of the teams, etc. are included.
In this case, personality of the team members seemed to impend on the team’s success. For instance,
Karen Baio described her other team members to be childish and they looked at the project as a game.
She also described Valerie Merz to be very self-centered, focused on marketing, and very aggressive in
the meetings. In addition, the process section of team effectiveness includescommon purpose, conflict
levels, team efficacy, etc. In this case, conflict levels seemed to be an issue in the manner that the team
could not decide if a modular design was a good idea or not. Therefore, with factors that arose such as
these, the team’s success was impended upon. 4. Merz’s options at the end of the case included going
into the office she overheard conversation from and try to resolve issues with O’Brien and Fogel about
the modular 2

design or go into Beaumont’s office and resign from the team. In order to get the IntensCare team back
in order, I think Valerie Merz should have gone to talk to O’Brien and Fogel and the rest of the team
members first and attempt to resolve this issue with them. If the conversation with them was not what
she expected, she should then go into Beaumont’s office and tell him what has been going on. In turn,
Beaumont could help in solving the situation and perhaps relieve some of her stress. I think MediSys
could do certain things to improve the performance of future tea

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Medi Sys Case - Case Study

Course:

Organizational Behavior (MGT 304)

MediSys Case 1. Art Beaumont, the new president hired in 2008, created an IntensCare product
development team, along with his executive team. This team included: Karen Baio of Regulatory Affairs,
Aaron Gerson who was the Research and Development researcher who formulated the idea, Bret
O’Brien who was the manager in Product Engineering, Jack Fogel who was the Senior Production
manager, Dipesh Mukerjee who was the Software & Design manager, and Valerie Merz who was
Marketing manager. Beaumont, along with his executive team, created this cross-functional team in
order to create and implement a strategy for growing the business swiftly. A cross-functional team is
one in which employees from about the same hierarchical level, but from different work areas, come
together to accomplish a task. This team represented a new approach to product development at
MediSys since it used a cross-functional team to speed up product development by working together
continuously to move a product from its conceptual stage to final production, known as parallel
development. 2. Positive synergy is the ability of a group to outperform even its best individual member.
In other words, teams are often used in research laboratories because they can draw on the diverse
skills of various individuals to produce more meaningful research than could be generated by all the
researchers working independently. This team did not seem to have positive synergy since its members
had different drivers, which made it difficult to make good decisions together as a team. For example, as
O’Brien described it,marketing’s role was revenue-driven, production’s was to manage a supply chain,
software and design’s was to integrate the software into the design, engineering’s was to 1

deliver at cost and on time, and regulatory’s was to throw roadblocks in front of everyoneelse. 3. Three
concepts that lead to team effectiveness include context, composition, and process. For the context
section for determining team effectiveness, adequate resources, leadership and structure, climate of
trust, and performance evaluation & reward systems are necessary. In this case, the MediSys IntensCare
product development team seemed to lack a good leadership and structure because Jack Fogel, the
team leader, seemed to be too concerned with the product, and too little concerned with the business
issues and impending launch. Climate of trust seemed to be an issue that was lacking between the team
members since the members were worried about the time line and aggressive goals and did not trust or
were not confident with each other in meeting those goals. For the composition section of team
effectiveness, abilities of the members, personality, allocating roles, size of the teams, etc. are included.
In this case, personality of the team members seemed to impend on the team’s success. For instance,
Karen Baio described her other team members to be childish and they looked at the project as a game.
She also described Valerie Merz to be very self-centered, focused on marketing, and very aggressive in
the meetings. In addition, the process section of team effectiveness includescommon purpose, conflict
levels, team efficacy, etc. In this case, conflict levels seemed to be an issue in the manner that the team
could not decide if a modular design was a good idea or not. Therefore, with factors that arose such as
these, the team’s success was impended upon. 4. Merz’s options at the end of the case included going
into the office she overheard conversation from and try to resolve issues with O’Brien and Fogel about
the modular ms. One of those things involve making sure the team leader is effective, is doing his job
well by communicating with the whole team, and liked by all the team members. Another thing they can
do is put members that have similar personalities and motives on the same team,instead of people that
do not display similar personality traits or motives. One other thing they could have done is if they
cannot decide on a certain design to use, this case being the modular design, they can perhaps bring in
other people, such as Beaumont to help them solve their issue and relieve some stress from their
shoulders