You work for the IT organization in an American company that owns and manages five family-oriented theme parks under a well known brand in the Midwest.
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Description
You work for the IT organization in an American company that owns and manages five family-oriented theme parks under a well known brand in the Midwest. The flagship, original park is situated on a stunning 6,000 acre lot on a hill overlooking a large, beautiful lake.
You have been working in the company as a software developer, and you have had some
success on projects involving migrating software to new versions, moving to cloud services,
and addressing difficult technical issues in a variety of technology areas in the company.
Most important, you are becoming known for your “people” skills, dealing well with
emotional customers under stressful situations. You don’t really know what that means.
After all, you are just doing your job. You have a reasonable expectation that in the next
few years, you will be promoted to oversee a team of developers in the data center.
One day in late February you are called in to a meeting with the CIO for the company (your
boss’s boss). It is a little alarming because you have never had a conversation with this
lady, only saying “Hi” to her as she passed by in the hallway. You are then pleased to learn
that she has heard good things about your work, and surprised when she assigns you to be
the project manager for a project aimed at building a mobile application to help the park
customers get directions in real time to the various thrill rides and get an estimated
number of minutes they might have to wait in line to take each ride. She hints that if you
do well, you will be on a management fast track.
The CIO is very excited about the new app, in large part because other theme parks, like
Hersheypark, Busch Gardens and Disneyworld have already started to work on their own
mobile apps. The potential downside of this assignment is that she does not say you are
able to work full time on the project. Apparently your current work on other projects and
service issues continues. It’s your problem, not hers.
The CIO wants to make a big splash by unveiling the new mobile app on the opening day
for all five theme parks, which is always scheduled on Mother’s Day, May 11. The CIO does
not seem to be too worried abut the short time to implementation. She tells you that she
has already identified a small firm in Palo Alto, in southern California. Turns out the head
