The Energy Equation

Chapter 2Unintentional Conflict

It's June 2016 and a leading healthcare IT company is experiencing a tremendous amount of conflict around its implementation projects. The Professional Services group, which is responsible for implementing the company's clinical software products at client hospitals and clinics, is in charge of the projects. Each time the company sells a system, a client project is created and assigned to a project manager, who is given overall responsibility for the success of the project. Each project requires a cross‐functional team of experts in the various disciplines associated with the system—radiology, ambulatory, pharmacy, and others. To serve as a source for these resources, functional departments within the Professional Services group have been formed around each of the disciplines. These departments hire and train people in the various specialty areas.

Mary Martin, a project manager (PM), is assigned to manage a new project. To build her project team, Mary requests resources from the functional departments. She gets the resources she needs and knows it is because new projects have a lot of visibility with senior management. However, three months into her nine‐month project, the staffing commitments began to change. The Radiology Department manager, who was facing staff shortages in his department, reassigned Mary's full‐time radiology lead to a new project that was just starting up. He offered Mary a different resource for only ten hours per week. ...