The IBM PC junior was a project that was initiated by the IBM in march 1984. It is among the several projects that failed due to stakeholder management. The project entailed the introduction of a home computer, thus its name PC junior. The project lasted between 1984 march and 1985 may (Kummer et al., 1984). It incorporated the intention of lowering the cost variation of the IBM PC alongside hardware capabilities which were better and suited with video games. In addition, the project was aimed at ensuring that it had a competitive advantage in a more direct way with other already established home computers such as the Commodore 6.4 and the Apple II.
The project however, still retained the IBM personal computer’s 8088 CPU as well as the BIOS interface, however, gave out enhanced sound and graphic, slot of ROM cartridge, ports of built-in joysticks as well as an inferred wireless keyboard. In addition, the project supported expansion through sidecar modules. However, despite all the anticipations from the IBM project, it was a failure within the market. This failure is associated with several factors as far as stakeholder management is concerned.
The IBM PCjr is considered a failure due to several issues and aspects that were never met and incorporated within the project. At first, the project was compatible partially with IBM. This incompatibility has resulted to the consideration of the entire project as a failure. In addition, the incompatibility is linked to its failure in the market despite the anticipations made (Cooper,2021). In addition, the support for the software library for IBM was limited by the project, an aspect that made it be considered a failure as far as other factors within the entire project is concerned.
The high criticization of its chiclet keyboard due to its poor quality was a factor that led to the consideration of the entire project as a failure. many PC programs could not run in the established 128kb RAM that was in place within the project. It was as well not expandable to handle most PC programs.
The IBM management is mostly associated with the failure of the project. At the initial stages of setting up the framework of the project, there was no effective consideration of the after-product of the project (Breuer & Lüdeke-Freund,2019). Furthermore, the stakeholders failed to ensure that the necessities of the project were effectively provided for. An aspect that resulted to the failure of the project upon introduction to the market. In the development of the project, there were no anticipation and evaluation of the effectiveness of the final end product in relation to other competing projects such as Apple II. Furthermore, the lower RAM of the PC ought to have been evaluated by the IBM specific strategist and stakeholders (Clevenger, & MacGregor,2019). There are several illustrations and instances where the IBM stakeholders have been blamed and associated with the market failure of IBM PCjr of 1984-185. Project management is basically on the hands of stakeholders as far as IBM PCjr is concerned. Thus, the stakeholders are associated with the failure of the project. Since the stakeholders failed to accountably integrate the project before initiation and completion.
The project team should have considered pre-evaluation of the project before initiating its programming and development. Furthermore, constant supervision from the IBM officials during the entire project would be necessary. The most critical recommendation that the stakeholders would have deployed concerns the piloting test. Piloting exercise of the entire project should have been conducted by the stakeholders before submitting the project to the market and demonstrating its limitedness and inefficiency.
References
Breuer, H., & Lüdeke-Freund, F. (2019). Values-Based Stakeholder Management: Concepts and Methods. In Rethinking Strategic Management (pp. 217-239). Springer, Cham.
Clevenger, M. R., & MacGregor, C. J. (2019). Stakeholder Management and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). In Business and Corporation Engagement with Higher Education. Emerald Publishing Limited.
Cooper, M. (2021). How the PC was born and why it hasn’t died yet. ITNOW, 63(2), 4-7.
Estridge, P. D., Bradley, D. J., & Kummer, D. A. (1984). The IBM PCjr. Proceedings of the IEEE, 72(3), 322-330.
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