Website design, production, and hosting

You have been hired by website design, production, and hosting company whose new animated website
designs are attracting a lot of attention and a lot of customers. Currently, employees are organized into different functions such as hardware, software design, graphic art, and website hosting, as well as functions such as marketing and human resources. Each function takes its turn to work on a new project from initial
customer request to final online website hosting.
The problem the company is experiencing is that it typically takes one year from the initial idea stage to the time that the website is up and running; the company wants to shorten this time by half to protect and expand its market niche. In talking to other managers, you discover that they believe the company’s current functional structure is the source of the problem—it is not allowing employees to develop websites fast enough to satisfy customers’ demands. They want you to design a better structure.
Questions
Discuss ways in which you can improve how the current functional structure operates so that it speeds
website development.
Discuss the pros and cons of moving to a (a) multidivisional, (b) matrix, or (c) product team structure to
reduce website development time.
Which of these structures do you think is most appropriate, and why?
You have been asked by your company’s CEO to find a way to improve the performance of its teams of web design and web- hosting specialists and programmers. Each team works on a different aspect of website production, and while each is responsible for the quality of its own performance, its performance also depends on how well the other teams perform. Your task is to create a control system that will help to increase the performance of each team separately and facilitate cooperation among the teams. This is necessary because the various projects are interlinked and affect one another just as the different parts of the car must fit together. Since competition in the website production market is intense, it is imperative that each website be up and running as quickly as possible and incorporate all the latest advances in website
software technology.
Questions
What kind of output controls will best facilitate positive interactions both within the teams and among the
teams?
What kind of behavior controls will best facilitate positive interactions both within the teams and among the
teams?
How would you go about helping managers develop a culture to promote high team performance?