| Course | PM 583 Organizational Transformation and Governance (PM/583) |
|---|---|
| Week | 3 |
| Paper type | Graduate transformation drivers analysis |
| Length | about 1,171 words, 4 double-spaced pages plus title page and references |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | University of Phoenix |
| Program | MBA |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for PM 583 Week 3
Retiring Programmers, Ninety-Minute Lines and a Federal ID Deadline: Analyzing the Drivers of a Motor Vehicle Division's Transformation
[Student Name]
University of Phoenix
PM/583: Organizational Transformation and Governance
Week 3 Assignment
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The State Motor Vehicle Division, its data and the forces described are composites written for a model paper.
The State Motor Vehicle Division, the composite Midwestern agency used in this course, has a governance frame from Week 1 and a phased, service-first strategy from Week 2. Before designing the transformation in detail, its leaders need to understand the forces involved: what is pushing the division to change, how strongly and how urgently, and what will resist. This paper analyzes those forces.
Why Drivers Matter for Design
Vial (2019), synthesizing a large body of studies, framed digital transformation as what happens when new technologies upset an organization's existing ways of creating value and it reworks those ways in response, with structural changes and barriers shaping the outcomes. Kuipers et al. (2014) reviewed research on change in public organizations and noted that public sector change is shaped by political context, multiple stakeholders and legal constraints that differ from those in private firms. Both reviews suggest that understanding the forces is not academic: drivers determine where change will find energy, and barriers determine where it will stall.
External Drivers
State policy: the governor's online-first policy requires agencies to offer common transactions online and report progress yearly. Strength: high. Urgency: medium; the first report is due in eighteen months.
Federal identification requirements: licenses used for federal purposes must meet federal standards for identity verification and document retention, adding steps that the old system handles with workarounds. Strength: high. Urgency: high, since the division must keep processing compliant cards accurately while volumes stay elevated.
Customer expectations: residents now complete banking, shopping and tax filing on their phones and compare the division unfavorably. Survey data show 68 percent would prefer to renew online if they could. Strength: medium to high. Urgency: medium.
Legislative oversight: after the first failure, the legislature funds only in stages tied to visible results. Strength: high. Urgency: high, since the next funding stage depends on a first release within eighteen months.
Internal Drivers
Workforce risk: four of the six programmers who maintain the mainframe can retire within three years. Strength: very high. Urgency: high; this is the force with the least flexibility.
Maintenance cost: mainframe maintenance and licensing cost about $9.4 million a year and rise about 6 percent annually. Strength: medium. Urgency: medium.
Service performance: average office waits of 47 minutes, over 90 minutes in two metro offices, drive complaints and legislative attention. Strength: high. Urgency: medium.
Fraud and error risk: paper-based title transfers allow errors and occasional fraud, with about 1,100 title corrections a month. Strength: medium. Urgency: medium.
Restraining Forces
Staff distrust: front-line staff lived through four years of training on a system that never launched. A pulse survey found only 22 percent believe the new effort will succeed. Strength: high.
County dependence: the 72 county treasurers who process registrations rely on current screens and procedures, and several are elected officials with political influence. Strength: medium to high.
Procurement rules: state procurement takes six to nine months for large contracts, slowing the start. Strength: medium.
Data quality: decades of records contain duplicates and inconsistencies that must be cleaned before migration. Strength: medium.
Budget staging: staged funding reduces risk but makes long-term commitments to vendors and staff harder. Strength: medium.
The strongest force against change was not technology or money but a survey result: twenty-two percent.
Interactions Among the Forces
The forces do not act separately. Workforce risk and legislative staging reinforce each other: if the retiring programmers leave before the first release, the division cannot show results by the funding deadline. Staff distrust and county dependence also interact, because county staff hear front-line clerks' doubts and treasurers bring them to legislators. Customer expectations and the online-first policy push in the same direction, but the federal identity requirements pull some transactions back toward in-person visits, since documents must be checked. Mapping these interactions shows that only a few points matter most: capturing mainframe knowledge, winning over front-line staff and giving counties a voice.
What the Data Do Not Show
The analysis rests on surveys, audits and cost records, but some forces are hard to measure. The legislature's patience is a political judgment that may change after an election. Staff distrust may be deeper among long-serving clerks than the survey average suggests, since response rates were lower in the largest offices. The division will repeat the staff survey before each release and brief the oversight committee informally between funding stages, so that changes in these softer forces are noticed early.
The Balance of Forces
Lewin's force field approach, in which change occurs when driving forces outweigh restraining ones or when restraining forces are reduced, helps summarize the picture. The drivers are strong and several are urgent, especially workforce risk, federal requirements and legislative staging. But the restraining forces are concentrated in people, staff and counties, whose cooperation the transformation needs. Adding more pressure, such as tighter deadlines, would likely increase resistance. Fernandez and Rainey (2006) synthesized research on public sector change and identified factors associated with success, including ensuring the need for change is understood, providing a plan, building internal support and overcoming resistance, securing top management support, building external support and institutionalizing changes. Several of those factors speak directly to weakening restraining forces rather than adding drivers.
A Driver That Weakens Over Time
One driver will fade. Federal identity requirements press hardest during the period when many residents are replacing older licenses; once most licenses in circulation meet the federal standard, the volume of these transactions will fall back toward normal renewal levels. The strategy should not be built around a temporary peak. That argues for designing the licensing service for steady demand and handling the current surge with temporary staffing and extended office hours rather than permanent structures.
Design Implications
Start where drivers are strongest and resistance weakest: registration renewals, a high-volume, low-complexity service that customers want online and county staff find tedious.
Address workforce risk first in sequence: the first release must replace mainframe modules that only the retiring programmers understand, paired with knowledge capture sessions now.
Turn distrust into participation: a front-line design group of 30 staff from offices and counties will test every release before launch, and leaders will acknowledge the first failure openly at every kickoff.
Treat counties as partners: county treasurers get a seat on the steering committee and early access to new screens, with training at their offices.
Use legislative staging as a discipline: plan each release to deliver visible results before each funding decision.
Conclusion
The motor vehicle division faces strong, urgent drivers for transformation: retiring programmers, federal requirements, legislative staging, state policy, customer expectations and costly, slow service. Its restraining forces are concentrated in people, especially staff distrust after the failed first attempt and county dependence on current processes. Research on public sector change suggests weakening those forces through participation, support and visible progress rather than adding pressure. The design implications follow: start with renewals, capture mainframe knowledge now, make staff and counties co-designers and use staged funding to show results early.
References
Fernandez, S., & Rainey, H. G. (2006). Managing successful organizational change in the public sector. Public Administration Review, 66(2), 168-176. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2006.00570.x
Kuipers, B. S., Higgs, M., Kickert, W., Tummers, L. G., Grandia, J., & Van der Voet, J. (2014). The management of change in public organizations: A literature review. Public Administration, 92(1), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12040
Vial, G. (2019). Understanding digital transformation: A review and a research agenda. Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 28(2), 118-144. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsis.2019.01.003
What the PM 583 Week 3 instructions ask
The third PM 583 assignment usually asks graduate students to analyze the drivers of organizational transformation. Prompts may ask students to identify external and internal drivers, such as technology, regulation, customers, competition, workforce and finances, evaluate their strength and urgency, consider forces that resist change and explain how the analysis informs the transformation's approach and priorities. Some versions call for a specific tool, such as force field analysis. Use the organization from earlier weeks, support each driver with evidence and draw on peer-reviewed research on organizational and digital transformation, particularly in the relevant sector, in APA format.
How this PM 583 Week 3 example is built
Here the model sorts eight driving forces for the motor vehicle division: four external, including the state's online-first policy, federal identification requirements, customer expectations shaped by private online services and the legislature's demand for staged results, and four internal, including the retirement of mainframe programmers, rising maintenance costs, long office waits and fraud risks in paper processes. Each is rated for strength and urgency with evidence. Five restraining forces follow, the most important being staff distrust after the failed first attempt and county treasurers' reliance on current processes. A force field summary shows where the balance lies. The paper ends with design implications, such as starting with transactions where drivers are strongest and turning staff into co-designers to weaken distrust.
PM 583 Week 3 grading rubric: where the points go
Top marks on this analysis require evidence and weighing. Strong papers identify both external and internal drivers relevant to the organization, support each with data or documented conditions and rate them rather than treating all as equal. Restraining forces should be analyzed with the same care, including human and political resistance. Higher marks go to analyses that draw on studies of organizational and digital transformation to interpret the forces and that draw specific implications for how the transformation should be designed. Graders also look for a summary, such as a force field table, that lets a reader see the balance at a glance. Clear organization, measured judgment and tidy APA references complete the paper.
PM 583 Week 3 help: mistakes to avoid
Driver lists often read like a generic PESTEL with no link to the organization. Keep only the forces that actually press on yours and give evidence for each. Another frequent gap is ignoring restraining forces, which often decide whether change succeeds. Name them, including people's past experience. Students also stop at analysis without saying what it means; each major force should change something in the transformation's design. Some papers present technology as the driver when the real drivers are customers, workforce or policy that technology serves. Finally, in a public sector case, include political and legislative forces. When your forces still read as a flat list, ask which three would sink the change if ignored; a tutor can work through that ranking with you.
Related PM 583 sample papers
Other PM 583 week samples
- PM 583 Week 1: Governance Principles
- PM 583 Week 2: Developing Strategy
- PM 583 Week 4: Change Management Models
- PM 583 Week 5: Aligning Projects and Teams
- PM 583 Week 6: Governance and Change Plan
More MBA sample papers
- MGT 576 Week 3: Analyzing Competitive Advantage
- MKT 554 Week 3: Motivation and Brand Perception
- MKT 574 Week 3: Branding and Brand Equity
- PM 570 Week 3: Program Management
PM 583 Week 3 questions, answered
What does PM 583 Week 3 usually cover?
It usually covers the drivers of organizational transformation: external and internal forces pushing for change, forces resisting it and how analyzing them shapes the transformation's design and priorities.
Where can I find a free PM 583 Week 3 sample paper?
The Week 3 analysis above of driving and restraining forces at a state motor vehicle division is free to read in full.
What is force field analysis?
A method, based on Kurt Lewin's work, that lists the forces driving a change and the forces restraining it, often rated by strength, to decide how to strengthen drivers or weaken resistance.
What drives digital transformation in public agencies?
Common drivers include citizen expectations, government policy, aging technology and workforce, cost pressure, security and fraud risks and the opportunity to use data better.
Why does past failure matter in a transformation?
People remember failed change. Distrust from an earlier attempt can become a strong restraining force unless leaders acknowledge it and involve staff in shaping the new effort.
Write yours, or have the desk draft it
This paper is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official University of Phoenix document. Read it for the moves, then write your own to the instructions in your classroom. If you want one built to your exact prompt and rubric, the first custom sample is free and arrives in 24 to 48 hours.
Request this one custom, free · All PM 583 week samples · All courses