Mistakes That HP Made During the Development of Kittyhawk, Case Study Example

Introduced in June 1992, Kittyhawk was one of the most promising projects that Hewlett Packard (HP) Company had in mind at that particular time. The micro drive was meant to enable them compete favorably in the market against their competitors. With all these expectations, the project did not emerge very successful due to a number of decisions that most of the company directors made while initiating the project. Most of the actions that were taken by these companies seemed viable on one side, but greatly hurt the other side of the company. The decision to separate the project team from the other R&D divisions was a good idea since it helped in minimizing resistance from other teams within the organization. This seemed to help the company while in the real sense it closed doors for critics. Thus, the developers could not easily point out their mistakes. The team was also given a lot of freedom to an extent that they could adopt the development processes and make decisions that suited their needs. This created doorway for bias since most of these members had differing opinions. The above-mentioned strategies seemed very promising and effective but at the same time they hurt the project development indirectly.

The company, thus, made a number of mistakes that did contribute to improper launch of their products in the market. One of these mistakes was entrusting the management team with dual responsibility i.e. developing the project product and finding market for it at the same time. Developing a product before performing a proper market research is equally risky for any other business. In this regard, the decision to develop a product before establishing its market was not a prudent idea. Their lack of success and support by other PDA companies could have been an indicator that the project was not picking up at a good pace.

Living on assumptions that people would like the 1.3-inch drive also caused much harm to the project. At this point, the company would have figured out the product market before development. The assumption of making $100 million also misled the company since they budgeted for cash that was nonexistent. This led to misuse of resources in developing products for a nonexistent market.

Another wrong idea that the company dwelt on during the formation of this project was the level emphasis that was placed on the project. As a result, employees from other departments felt isolated hence, they could not work with morale to achieve the company’s objectives. The isolation made these comes to develop an attitude that they were undermined and their projects not hold any significant meanings within the organization.

Consequently, in bid to select the best individuals to handle the project, experienced and knowledgeable persons were selected. This resulted in a professional vacuum created in other parts of the company. As a result, the other sectors were left with non-competent people who could not effectively deliver. Despite this being a good strategy to come up with a more viable project, the company forsook other parts hence exposing them to mass failures. Most of the decisions made by the company were logistics but on the other side, they played to seriously hurt the company growth. The above mistakes, thus, led to unsuccessful market entry of the kittyhawk as well as lowering the company’s productivity.