Discuss the following scenario and propose ONE recommendation (as a group) to al

Question

Discuss the following scenario and propose ONE recommendation (as a group) to allocate the bonus money. Provide your justification.

Exercise: A Reward Allocation Decision

You are in charge of allocating a $12,000 bonus to a team that recently met an important deadline. The team was in charge of designing a Web-based product for a client. The project lasted a year. There were five people in the team. Your job is to determine each person’s share from the bonus.

Devin: Project manager. He was instrumental in securing the client, coordinating everyone’s effort, and managing relationships with the client. He put in a lot of extra hours for this project. His annual salary is $80,000. He is independently wealthy, drives an expensive car, and does not have any debt. He has worked for the company for 5 years and worked for the project from the beginning.

Alice: Technical lead. She oversaw the technical aspects of the project. She resolved many important technical issues. During the project, while some members worked extra hours, she refused to stay at the office outside regular hours. However, she was productive during regular work hours, and she was accessible via e-mail in the evenings. Her salary is $50,000. She is a single mother and has a lot of debt. She has worked for the company for 4 years and worked for the project for 8 months.

Erin: Graphic designer. She was in charge of the creative aspects of the project. She experimented with many looks, and while doing that she slowed down the entire team. Brice and Carrie were mad at her because of the many mistakes she made during the project, but the look and feel of the project eventually appealed to the client, which resulted in repeat business. Her salary is $30,000. She is single and lives to party. She has worked for the company for 2 years and worked for this project from the beginning.

Brice: Tester. He was in charge of finding the bugs in the project and ensuring that it worked. He found many bugs, but he was not very aggressive in his testing. He misunderstood many things, and many of the bugs he found were not really bugs but his misuse of the system. He had a negative attitude toward the whole project, acted very pessimistically regarding the likelihood of success, and demoralized the team. His salary is $40,000. He has accumulated a large credit card debt. He has worked for the company for 3 years and worked for the project in the last 6 months.

Carrie: Web developer. She was in charge of writing the code. She was frustrated when Erin slowed down the entire project because of her experimentation. Carrie was primarily responsible for meeting the project deadline because she put in a lot of extra work hours. Her salary is $50,000. Her mother has ongoing health issues, and Carrie needs money to help her. She worked for the company for the past year and was involved in this p

Explanation / Answer

This is a good question, but the answer can be subjective. My view of this is:

Firstly, I would primarily consider only the person's professional contribution to the project. Their personal situation should not affect me in my decision to allocate the share of the bonus.

Devin: Devin has played a crucial role of the PM. While the role might have been co-ordination, he was instrumental in getting the project delivered on time, and most importantly, for securing the client. I would allocate $3000 for Devin

Alice: It is important to understand that this was a technical project, and hence, you would need someone from the technical team to play an important role. Since the project had seen some hiccups in terms of deadlines, I would have been really pleased had Alice invested those few hours beyond the call of duty. While it is perfectly fine for an employee to stay within working hours, it is those few extra miles an employee takes which make a difference. I will allocate $2000 to Alice.

Erin: Erin, the graphic designer, though she slowed the project down a bit, she ultimately delivered good results. The client was satisfied, and this resulted in further business from the client. I am totally for someone trying new things, even if it fails. Here, Erin has clearly succeeded. Any project is ultimately about being a team effort - it is possible that while trying something new, an individual might slow things down, however, it is under these situations that the team should step up. I would award Erin $3000

Brice: While Brice found many bugs, there is no value add if the bugs found are not value adding and if he doesn't do enough to quash the bugs aggressively, especially when the project is going slow. Given his attitude, I would award Brice $1000

Carrie: Carrie was clearly a star, she put in a lot of extra effort and was in charge of the core of the project, which was the code. I would award her $4000

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