Case Study: Fostering Meaningful Change with the Large Format Printer Division at HP

摘要

Sustaining meaningful, strategic change in any organization can be difficult, particularly when there are strong personalities and established practices in place. Most initiatives are either too broad in their changes, or fail to address the needs of participants.rnWithin the Large Format Printer Division at Hewlett-Packard in Barcelona, despite some of the strongest front-end analysis practices in the industry, projects continued to face delivery challenges similar to those in many other companies.rnManagement decided to take action and revert the trend in declining product development efficiency. The authors collaborated with the specific intent to provide lasting and meaningful change for the group.rnThrough a series of interview sessions with all of the key people in the team, we collected a wide range of different perspectives: current practices, pain points, and suggestions for improvement.rnAs the stories were collected, a broader picture began to emerge. This was a strong, disciplined engineering culture, with strong elements of practice in place that needed to be reinforced and leveraged for the needed improvements.rnRather than making recommendations that could easily be dismissed, we focused on collaborating with the teams to help them find a solution they could embrace. The resulting solution required more of a change in perception than behavior.rnIn deployment, we worked with management, marketing and engineering to help them understand the value of change in their terms, and the energy of the group grew quickly. As the information sessions progressed, there was greater demand for participation.rnWe describe the initial situation within the group, and the approach to selecting and implementing appropriate changes. We will reveal the deceptively simple viewpoint that was the core of the changes, the effect on the culture and project results that have taken place since.