Instruction: Provide relevant, thorough, and clear answers of each question.

Scenario

Ann Lewis is the VP of Product Development, and Ed Silva is the VP of Product Service and Support. You are an external OD practitioner.

Yesterday you received the following letter from Ann.

"I wanted to contact you because Ed and I have been talking about a problem that we are having with our two teams. My team, Product development, perform all functions regarding our products. We develop new products and upgrade existing products. Ed's team work on Product support, so his subordinates go to the customer's location and provide installation or maintenance support for customers who order new units or who have problems with their existing products. If something breaks, the customer calls the 1-800 number and we send one of the Ed's technicians to the site.

The problem is that our two teams are currently at odds. Ed's team is constantly sending us product upgrade requests or suggestions to reduce the maintenance needs they see. After all, they see the trends and common points of failure on the products. My team gets defensive when they get these upgrade requests. They want to decide what gets upgraded and what doesn't, and truly we have a limited number of product development personnel to work on these upgrades, so we should prioritize the work, and sometimes it takes a while for us to get to the request.

Ed and I would like to meet with you to determine how we can get our teams to work together more effectively. Can you let me know when you might be available to meet?"

Questions

1.What is the presenting problem in the scenario?

2.What are the underlying problems for the conflict between the Product Development team and the Product Support team? List the symptoms of the problems.

3.Design in detail one congruent intervention; focus on the following points:

Purpose (what challenge will be addressed)

Participants: who will participate, number of participants

Length: how many days will the event continue

Schedule of the tasks: what and when will be done