I have always considered teamwork within our teams as our strength within the Information Technology (IT) department of our organization. This attribute, in addition to my team's systems and business expertise, and my dedication in developing custom software applications, has resulted in several successful product launches. In our organization, the dramatic change in the retail landscape has triggered the need for a new software system to manage critical business functions and to integrate closely with other existing software systems. It became clear that the current legacy retail system was not scalable to meet business unit expectations. As a result, the Senior Director of Retail Business Development, with support from the Revenue Committee, initiated a request to our CIO and IT Director to implement a comprehensive software system to meet the needs of the retail department. retail. This initiative then became a top priority for our department and my team to implement this product within a limited time and budget. A reputable enterprise resource planning (ERP) software package was chosen as a solution and since my team had no expertise on this software package, management decided to bring together a project manager and a few developers to implement this product hybrid. Although the new project manager hired was new to the organization, she had worked closely with our IT director in her previous job. At the start of the project things were going well and my group was in control of this project, but as the months went by there was clearly a disconnect between the teams and this was evident in the progress of the project as the other team was late and did not comply with the specifications. During project meetings, we were... middle of paper ......very attentive to the project, scarce resources and uncertainty. Given the way things went, I don't think I could have done anything to diffuse the climate between the two teams, unless I had positional or reference power like l other manager. Unfortunately, I think my team was put in an awkward position with high expectations that were set without the required technical skills, which ended up being a blow to our reputation and track record. To prevent this from happening again, I believe that someone from across departments is absolutely necessary to coordinate efforts between teams, especially when the expertise of each team varies considerably. While this is a tough sell, given the political situation, I will make it my duty to advocate for such a setup which will, in turn, work in the best interest of my organization..