CASE STUDY

Introduction

Ike and Michelle "Mike" Turner are a brother and sister business team based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Their dad, Spike Turner, was an engineer with Kerr-McGee Oil Company. He built bicycles as a hobby. Ike and Mike soon joined their father in his passion but took it a step further when they started their own bike company. The siblings founded Mike and Ike's Bikes while still in high school, and have enjoyed 15 consecutive years of double-digit growth.

The company is privately owned by the Turner family, with Mike serving as the president and Ike as the vice president of manufacturing. In contrast to the company's roots, they now buy the majority of their inventory from the Far East and retail bicycles through an extensive international network of warehouses and small stores in the West. The company revenue last year was $531 million, with a profit of $38 million. Mike and Ike still manufacture a line of racing bikes in their Tulsa plant. These bikes are sold through their own retail distribution outlets. Both Mike and Ike were competitive bike racers in their youth, and these bikes are the result of their knowledge of the racing field. The company's racing bikes have a solid reputation and are well known throughout the world.

Pauline's Project

Mike and Ike have a younger sister, Pauline, who is a recent Harvard MBA graduate. At Harvard, Pauline studied systems development. Upon graduating, she worked as a customer service manager for a small Tulsa oil service company. Pauline then joined Mike and Ike's Bikes two years ago, bringing her expertise in the customer service area with her. She recently read about customer resources management (CRM) technologies and systems. Pauline has convinced Ike and Mike that this is something the firm needs. Pauline has never really found her niche with Mike and Ike's Bikes, and her siblings are pleased to appoint her as project manager for the CRM project. However, Pauline now realizes that it is one thing to get a proposal for a new system approved and quite another to figure out how to actually do it.

Question

Consider the case of Mike and Ike's Bikes. Pauline has been appointed as the project manager of a project to develop a customer relationship management (CRM) system that will eventually keep records of customers, their activities with the firm, and the status of their orders. Pauline is located in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The CRM system will be used throughout the worldwide corporation. Pauline wants to involve IT professionals from throughout the firm. She learned in her MBA classes at Harvard that those who are involved in the development of a system will be more likely to use it and be more satisfied with the system in general. There are data centers in the warehouses, Tulsa plant, and headquarters. These are all linked to PCs in the retail outlets. Pauline has worked with many teams while earning her MBA. She is confident that she will be able to manage her team of IT professionals quite easily. In our reading for this unit, we looked at the characteristics of IT professionals, the unique nature of their work, and the synergy between IT professionals, their leaders, their work, their organizations, and their cultures. Pauline's team will be composed mainly of IT professionals. She has never worked closely with IT professionals and this makes her a bit nervous.

Prior to completing this discussion, refer to the IT Professionals Versus Non-IT Professionals illustration in the Resources to review the differences between an IT professional and a non-IT professional.

What can you tell her that is unique about leading a team of IT professionals?

Evaluate the relationship between IT professionals, the nature of their work, and preferred management approaches.

Describe at least three aspects of leading IT professionals that Pauline must address in order to be successful as manager of this IT project. Note: You do not have to select one aspect of each. You may pick two aspects from one environment and one from another, or all three from one environment. The three types of environments are:

Face-to-face.

Hybrid.

Pure virtual.