Computer Tech Management

Scenario:

A volunteer organization 'AllTechComm' is largely a group of computer professionals who wanted to give back to the community in a variety of ways, both non-technical and technical. A portion of your organization is support, HR, or training-oriented, and has only basic technical knowledge. You are the newly appointed VP of Technology. You have been part of the organization for 2 years, 1 year as an employee. Your role is to oversee the technical department of the organization, plan for future growth in the department, and provide guidance to the technology-based projects executed by the volunteers. AllTechComm is 3 years old with an average of 100 active volunteers at any given time. There are 10 employees, 6 full-time (including you) and 4 part-time.

The organization has 3 regular projects and one pet project they plan and execute each year. The three regular projects are: 1) Literacy Aid for Underprivileged Children 2) Volunteering technical expertise to other charitable organizations who can not afford expensive technical support 3) Working with homeless/poor individuals to create a resume and to search job boards. The pet project for the coming year is nicknamed TechnoSeniors, where the volunteers teach seniors in minimum care nursing homes how to connect to the internet, send email to their family and play computer games such as solitaire. The goal of the project is to help elderly people stay connected to friends and family, and keep their minds sharp slowing the mental decline sometimes associated with old age.

Your mandate as VP of Technology is to keep the regular projects strong and growing, plan for TechnoSeniors, and overhaul the AllTechComm intranet. Your must make the intranet one in which volunteers can sign up and manage their schedules, profiles, keep in better contact with their Project Leaders, and actually accomplish work together.

As AllTechComm builds its volunteer base, you desire to expand your primitive intranet (which currently only has structure for read-only articles) to become an interactive site where work gets done. Currently, you are aware that most view it only occasionally, as you seem to be the only person who posts an occasional article to the site. You dream for it to become a place where volunteers can choose projects and update each other on project progress, post work related discussion threads, keep their contact information up to date, and interact with their teams.

The Board of AllTechComm has requested a 1-2 page report that addresses the issue of how the adoption of this technology affects the way work is done, the budget, and the working relationships/hierarchy of the organization.

Your report should touch on the following points:

Will the company need new employees or more budget?
Who manages the people who manage the intranet?
Do you predict other features to be added to the intranet?
Will adding this intranet really help the organization work smarter, or do you think they simply feel pressure to be "online"?
Any other barriers or stumbling blocks you can think of?