Wolves at MegaFund

MegaFund is one of the largest fund management companies in the world. Its innovative funds attracted investors more than the funds at any other organization. However, by 1997, Charles Schwab, eTrade, and other financial companies had revolutionized stock trading. Customers could now manage their own fund accounts, buy and sell stocks, and play the margins without personal assistance from professional stock brokers. The Internet and mobile technology had enabled Web, PDA, cell-phone, and voice-response unit functionality. Unfortunately, MegaFund had fallen behind this revolution. Its technology organization was large, bureaucratic, and cumbersome. To make matters worse, it had implemented Capability Maturity Model Level 3 practices over the last year. If incorrectly implemented, these practices can increase bureaucracy, as they had at MegaFund. MegaFund was now so bureaucratic that it was hard to get anything done.

MegaFund explored ways to enable new technologies that could access the legacy databases where all customer account and trade information was stored. After several false starts, MegaFund managers decided to do it the right way. Usually when managers say that they’re going to do a project “the right way,” that project ends up dying from excess overhead. Sure enough, after nine months the project was stalled while battles raged over what sort of technology to use. Should it be Solaris, Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, or AIX? Should MegaFund standardize on Intel technology? Were Sun servers more scalable than IBM servers? Was COM the way of the future, or was CORBA the way to go? While these wars were being waged, the competition surged ahead.