| Course | PM 583 Organizational Transformation and Governance (PM/583) |
|---|---|
| Week | 5 |
| Paper type | Graduate alignment analysis |
| Length | about 1,169 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 5
Teams Built Around What Customers Do: Aligning Projects, People and Structure With a Motor Vehicle Division's Needs
[Student Name]
University of Phoenix
PM/583: Organizational Transformation and Governance
Week 5 Assignment
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The State Motor Vehicle Division, its teams, projects and figures are composites written for a model paper.
Earlier weeks set governance for the State Motor Vehicle Division, a composite Midwestern agency, chose a phased, service-first strategy, analyzed the forces involved and planned the change for the first release. The division now has funding for the first two years and a list of eleven proposed projects inherited from planning sessions. This paper asks whether those projects and the teams that will deliver them are aligned with the division's needs.
Testing the Project List Against the Strategy
Each proposed project was checked against the five objectives from Week 2: shorter office waits, more online transactions, mainframe retirement, faster dealer titles and staff confidence in new tools. Eight projects supported at least one objective. Three did not: a new intranet, a redesign of the agency logo and a document management upgrade for internal policies. They were dropped from the modernization program and returned to normal budgeting. Two others, an online renewal portal and a kiosk project, served the same customer transaction and were merged. The result is six efforts, each linked to objectives.
Chan and Reich (2007) reviewed research on aligning information technology with business strategy and concluded that alignment is associated with better performance but is difficult to achieve and maintain, depending on shared understanding between business and technology leaders, structures and ongoing communication. The project test is a first step; structures and communication follow.
Why Not Component Teams
The first, failed attempt organized work by technical component: a database team, an interface team, a business rules team and a testing team, coordinated by the vendor. Each team could finish its part without any customer transaction working end to end, and problems surfaced only at integration. Lawrence and Lorsch (1967) showed that organizations facing complex environments need both differentiation, units specialized for their tasks, and integration, mechanisms that bring them together, and that high performers achieved both. The first attempt had differentiation without effective integration.
Four Service-Line Teams and a Platform Team
The division will form persistent teams organized around lines of customer service:
Renewals: vehicle registration renewals and address changes, the first release.
Licensing: driver license issuance, renewal and federal identity verification.
Titles and dealers: title transfers, liens and electronic dealer processing.
County services: the tools and processes county treasurers use.
A shared platform team maintains the new records system, integration with the mainframe during the transition and common services such as payments and identity.
Each service-line team has a product owner from the division's business side, two or three front-line clerks or county staff rotating in for six months, a business analyst, four to six developers and testers from the systems integrator and a user experience designer. Teams stay together across releases rather than disbanding after each project, so that knowledge accumulates.
A team that owns a line of customer service cannot declare victory until a customer finishes the transaction it serves.
How the Teams Work Day to Day
Each service-line team works in two-week cycles, with a backlog ordered by its product owner against the strategic objectives. Front-line clerks on the team test new screens with real transactions from their offices, using a training environment loaded with anonymized records, and bring back what customers say at the counter. The platform team runs on the same calendar so that shared services arrive when service-line teams need them. Every two weeks the teams show working software to a mixed audience of supervisors, county staff and the senior responsible owner, which keeps the work visible and gives leaders a regular view of progress beyond status reports.
What Changes for Existing Units
The new structure changes the division's existing units. The information technology office no longer assigns programmers to projects; its staff move into the platform team or into service-line teams for the life of the program. The customer service bureau keeps managing offices but now shares responsibility for adoption with product owners. The training unit shifts from classroom courses on the old screens to short, hands-on sessions built with each team. These shifts are written into job descriptions so that they survive changes in leadership.
Capability Gaps and How to Close Them
Three gaps stand out. Product ownership: the division has no one experienced in prioritizing a backlog by customer value; four supervisors will receive product owner training and coaching from an experienced product owner hired for the first year. Data skills: cleaning and migrating decades of records requires data analysts the division lacks; two will be hired and the retiring programmers will pair with them before leaving. Service design: the division will contract a small design firm for the first year while training two staff to continue the work.
Integration Mechanisms
Integration keeps service-line teams from drifting apart. A common release calendar sets dates every quarter. An architecture board, chaired by the platform team lead, reviews any change to shared data or services. Teams share the five strategic objectives and a dashboard. A weekly coordination meeting of product owners resolves dependencies, such as the licensing team's need for the identity service the platform team is building.
Leadership That Keeps Alignment
Young and Jordan (2008) studied a large sample of information system projects and concluded that backing from senior leaders mattered more to project outcomes than any of the methodological factors they measured. Alignment therefore depends on leaders' continued attention. The steering committee will review the service-line teams' backlogs against the objectives each quarter, the director will attend a team review each month and funding for each team will be renewed yearly based on progress against objectives rather than completion of a fixed scope.
How Alignment Will Be Measured
Alignment is checked with three simple tests each quarter. Does every item in each team's next-quarter backlog trace to one of the five objectives? Do the objectives' measures move in the direction the teams' work should push them? And do front-line staff on rotation report that the teams are working on the problems they see at the counter? A no on any test prompts a conversation at the steering committee rather than an automatic change, since some valuable work, such as data cleanup, moves objectives only later.
Risks
Persistent teams can become siloed around their service lines; the architecture board and shared objectives counter this. Rotating front-line staff into teams reduces office staffing; the division will backfill with temporary clerks during rotations. The systems integrator may prefer component teams it is used to; the contract requires its staff to be embedded in service-line teams.
Conclusion
Aligning the motor vehicle division's projects and teams with its needs meant testing the project list against strategy, dropping and merging projects, replacing component teams with persistent service-line teams that include front-line staff, closing capability gaps in product ownership, data and design, building integration through a release calendar, architecture board and shared measures and keeping leaders engaged. The structure responds to the first attempt's failure and to the strategy's focus on what customers need to get done.
References
Chan, Y. E., & Reich, B. H. (2007). IT alignment: What have we learned? Journal of Information Technology, 22(4), 297-315. https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.jit.2000109
Lawrence, P. R., & Lorsch, J. W. (1967). Differentiation and integration in complex organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 12(1), 1-47. https://doi.org/10.2307/2391211
Young, R., & Jordan, E. (2008). Top management support: Mantra or necessity? International Journal of Project Management, 26(7), 713-725. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2008.06.001
What the PM 583 Week 5 instructions ask
For the fifth PM 583 paper, graduate students are often told to show how an organization lines up its projects and teams with what it needs and with its strategy. Prompts may ask students to evaluate whether current projects support strategy, propose team structures or organizational designs suited to the work, address skills and capability gaps, explain integration and coordination across teams and discuss how leadership maintains alignment over time. Use the organization from earlier weeks, show how each structural choice serves a need and draw on journal research about alignment, organization design or project-based work, cited in APA. Name the problem each design choice solves.
How this PM 583 Week 5 example is built
The example begins by checking the division's eleven proposed modernization projects against the five strategic objectives from Week 2; three serve none and are dropped, and two are merged. It then argues that projects organized by technical component, such as a database team and an interface team, would repeat the first attempt's mistakes, and instead forms four persistent teams around lines of customer service: renewals, licensing, titles and dealers and county services, with a shared platform team. Each team combines business staff, front-line clerks and technologists. A capability plan addresses gaps in product ownership and data skills. Integration rests on a common release calendar, an architecture board and shared measures. The paper ends with how the steering committee will keep teams aligned.
PM 583 Week 5 grading rubric: where the points go
The marks on this assignment depend on clear links between needs, projects and structures. Strong papers test existing work against strategy and act on the result, propose team structures with explicit reasons and show how teams will be staffed and coordinated. Credit goes to analysis of capability gaps with a plan to close them, to integration mechanisms that prevent teams from drifting apart and to leadership practices that maintain alignment. Research on organizational design and alignment supports the argument. Graders also look for honesty about the costs of the new design, such as backfilling staff who rotate into teams. A logical structure, specific examples and well-formed APA references round out the paper.
PM 583 Week 5 help: mistakes to avoid
Some papers declare that projects should align with strategy and never test the actual project list. Check each project against the objectives and say what happens to those that do not fit. Another frequent gap is proposing a new structure without explaining what problem it solves; tie each design choice to a need. Students also forget integration: teams organized around customers still share systems and data, so describe how they coordinate. Capability is often skipped; new structures fail when people lack the skills for new roles. Finally, alignment drifts over time, so describe a review rhythm. A tutor can help you draw the links between your objectives and your team design.
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PM 583 Week 5 questions, answered
What does PM 583 Week 5 usually cover?
It usually covers aligning projects and teams with organizational needs: testing projects against strategy, designing team structures, closing capability gaps, coordinating across teams and maintaining alignment over time.
Where can I find a free PM 583 Week 5 sample paper?
The Week 5 paper above aligns a motor vehicle division's projects and teams around lines of customer service, and it is free to read.
What is the difference between component teams and service-line teams?
Component teams are organized around parts of a system, such as a database or interface. Service line or product teams are organized around a customer outcome and include all the skills needed to deliver it.
How do organizations keep teams aligned with strategy?
Through shared objectives and measures, regular portfolio and strategy reviews, integration roles such as architecture boards and leaders who connect team priorities to organizational goals.
Why do capability gaps matter in organizational alignment?
Because a structure only works if people have the skills its roles require. Without training, hiring or coaching, new teams revert to old ways of working.
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