Retained by growing client to assist with preparing an organizational development plan for their engineering group. Group is responsible for new product transfer into manufacturing and capital project management. Conducted over 20 hours of interviews with members of the engineering group and the company’s supply chain, research and development, marketing, human resources, and accounting groups. Reviewed company policies and procedures, software tools, and career ladder. Compiled lists of all group projects and other activities into a seven-year resource requirements projection. Prepared confidential report with findings and recommendations for the group vice president and engineering group manager. Drafted organizational development plan with specific deliverables including new or revised company policies and procedures, current and future organizational charts, new and revised model job descriptions for engineering positions, and implementation plan.
| Company: Confidential Client |
Contents
Scope of Work
A growing company will often struggle to evolve their organizational structure to match the needs of the larger company. That was the case here, where the client had created a new engineering group about six months earlier, but they were struggling to keep up with all of the demands placed on the new group. As a first step, I drafted a proposed scope of work detailing who I would meet with, what information (policies, procedures, job descriptions, organizational charts, etc.) I wanted to review, and what my specific deliverables would be. The scope also included a project timeline. Once the client approved the scope of work, I began the organizational review.
Organizational Review
For this stage of the project, I visited the client’s corporate headquarters, their research and development center and their captive and contract manufacturing plants. Based on the list provided in the scope of work, the client set up a series of one-on-one and group meetings during these site visits. For each meeting, I prepared an agenda in the form of a questionnaire to guide the interview. This asked general and specific questions about the performance of the engineering group and its role within the company.
I also reviewed several dozen company documents including corporate policies, procedures, and human resources documents including organizational charts, job descriptions and information on the company’s career ladder. To prepare the resource requirements projection, every member of the engineering group was asked to compile a list of all their current and known future project activities as well as all other activities they perform as part of their job. For each activity, they were then asked to estimate how much time they spent, or would need to spend, on the activity each week. All of these times were then rolled up into a single spreadsheet with projections for future, as yet unknown, new product introduction projects.
The organizational review identified several opportunities for improvement of the engineering group. There was consistent feedback from across the company on the need for improved understanding of the business, better financial controls and more structured project management. The resource requirements projection also clearly showed that for all the activities expected of the group, it was understaffed. The details of these findings, along with specific recommendations, were compiled into a confidential report to the group vice president and the engineering group manager.
Organizational Development Plan
Based on the organizational review and recommendations, I then prepared a first draft of an organizational development plan. This was issued for internal review to key company managers that had participated in the review process. I then traveled to the client’s major sites with the engineering group manager to present a summary of the recommendations to and obtain feedback from these key company managers. This feedback was then incorporated into a second draft plan which, after further review and refinement was issued to the client in its final form.
Policy Drafting
Following the drafting of the organizational development plan, the client retained me to draft some of the new and revised engineering-related policies called for in the plan.