1) What accounted for the success of the project? First, right decision and support of top leaders. After the Company CEO Morgridge approved the ERP project in the board of directors, he introduced the project to all the employees, so that employees of the company knew that the ongoing project was the highlight of the company, thereby it reduced the resistance to reform. Second, CISCO Systems, Inc. retained a centralized management of the functional organization structure to ensure a stable organizational basis for promoting a significant innovation. Third, a powerful elites team. The project team composed of excellent IT elites, and organization motivated them efficiently in order to make them respond to the challenges actively. Fourth, Strong sense of responsibility and strong support came from the partners. CISCO chose the larger and stronger companies to be the partners in order to reach the win-win situation. CISCO chose KPMG as the integrated partner was based on the company's experience talents who have excellent professional knowledge and rich experience. As Cisco’s ERP software vendors, Oracle Corporation has stronger production capacity than other vendors, it has the ability to meet the standard of Cisco’s implementation of ERP project; at the same time, Oracle made a commitment about the long-term development of software package function. Fifth, the company’s advanced management idea and efficient operation pattern. The team's implementation strategy employed a development technique referred to as "rapid iterative prototyping." 2) What were the most important things that Cisco managers did right? What did they do wrong?
The most important things that Cisco managers did right were:
First, they made the right decision that exchanged Unix systems for ERP systems in order to meet the demand of business. Second, they made a