The Case of Digital West Inc. Prepared by: Gates Matthew Stoner . Copyrighted © 1998
N.B. This case does not represent a real event. Digital West is a web development company in the southwestern United States. The start-up company was initially financed three years ago, when some computer engineers at another local software company decided to start their own firm. Digital West clients include a local copper mining company, the regional telecommunications provider and a local specialty grocer.
Digital West started early in the web development business in the southwestern region. Two of Digital West's original founders came from Silicon Valley to start their own firm where market conditions were more favorable. Since other local software companies have been late to start in the web development sector, Digital West has a definite market advantage over its major competitors, including Star Networking Systems.
Dan Moss, a recent computer engineering graduate , has been at Digital West since June of 1997. Dan has worked closely with the Copper Mining web development team since his arrival at Digital West. Edward Moore supervises the Copper Mining web development team and is Vice President of New Media at Digital West. Edward has worked closely with all the engineers on the project and has been a mentor for Dan After arriving at Digital West, Dan was assigned to code several subroutines for the web site interface and database system.
Dan quickly adapted to the corporate culture of Digital West. Many of his fellow engineers were struggling with various bugs in their subroutines. Dan was finding coding the subroutines tedious and knew that there had to be a better way to code the routines. Finally, Dan decided to meet with his supervisor, Edward, to discuss the difficulties in coding the routines assigned to him.
Edward had been reviewing Dan's coding on the project and was aware of the problems with the routines. Edward started the meeting by praising Dan's efforts on the project thus far. Dan reminded Edward of himself as a young, right-out-of-college software engineer. Thus, Edward was more than happy to assist Dan. Edward dug through some boxes in the corner of his office, produced his old notes and shared them with Dan. Edward went on with his war-stories of the "good old days."
After the meeting, Dan carefully read over Edward's notes and started again coding the subroutines for Copper Mining web. In reading Edward's notes, Dan realized his errors. Within three weeks, Dan completed his assignments. Dan was also able to assist other engineers on the project with the expertise he gained from Edward.
In fact, the entire team had finished its assignments almost three months ahead of schedule. Immediately after the completion of the Copper Mining project, Edward received an email from Robert Carvalho, another engineer on the project.
To: Edward Moore <Emoore@digital_west.com>
From: Robert Carvalho <Rcarvalho@digital_west.com>
Subject: Copper Mining Project
Edward,
Now that the Copper Mining web site is done, I have time to write you regarding an event which occurred during the final weeks of the project. I felt the event was not significant enough to mention before because of the disruption it might have had the project being completed on time.
Towards the end of the project, Dan's attitude really changed and a lot of members on the team took offense at his attempts to help them complete their assignments. I understand the zeal of a recent college grad wanting to be part of the team, but his well-meaning intentions were offensive to several members of my team. I think this matter should be brought up during his performance review next week, as he has been at Digital West for almost a year.
Regards,
Robert
At Dan's performance review, Edward congratulated Dan's completion of his assignment of the Copper Mining web site and announced the positive feedback received from the client. Edward asked Dan about his relationships with other members of the team and about how his first year has been at Digital West. Dan stated that at first it was very difficult adjusting to working with other members of the team as "just a recent college grad" and the "new guy." But overall he felt like things were going well, and he was trying to make friends on the team.
Edward expressed his concern that maybe Dan was trying to fit in "too much." Edward told Dan of the email he had received from one of the members of the team regarding Dan's behavior with his fellow workers. Edward finished the meeting by telling Dan of his performance bonus, but noted that in six months he expected Dan problems interacting with his team members to be resolved.
