Abstract
1- Introduction
2- Methodological approach
3- Case study: How to choose the best investment project?
4- Conclusions
References
Abstract
The paper aims to analyze the need for change management strategy development in case of an organization wishing to replace its existing test equipment (software products) with newer and more advanced products. This has a positive impact both from the financial perspective and in terms of quality improvement of the product if the change situation is analyzed in the context of a related investment project implementation. With the increasing level of product complexity, there is a growing likelihood that these software products contain defects or errors, affecting customer satisfaction. The repairment cost of the product increases exponentially and in direct proportion to their lifecycle, from the development stage to the mass production phase. Therefore, our approach proposes to increase products (hardware and software testing equipment) quality by investing more in their performance which will positively impact the testing processes. The efficiency of the economic indicators calculation associated with the presented methodology will underline these issues.
Introduction
Moran & Brightman (2001) have defined change management as “a continuous renewal of the capabilities, structure and direction of an organization to meet the changing needs of customers and market demands”. Burnes (2004) considers that change is a permanent feature of organizational life, both operationally and strategically, so there should be no doubt about the importance of any organization’s ability to identify where it should to be in the future and how to manage the changes needed to get there. Consequently, organizational change can not be separated from organizational strategy or vice versa (Rieley& Clarkson, 2001; Draghici & Draghici, 2006). Graetz (2000) has suggest that: “against the background of increasing globalization, deregulation, rapid pace of technological innovation, increasing labor force of knowledge and changing social and demographic trends, few argue that the main task for management today is the leadership of organizational change”.