Nova Southeastern University
H. Wayne Huizenga School
of Business & Entrepreneurship
Assignment for Course: ISM5085
Submitted to: Nainika Patnayakuni
Submitted by:
Claudia Jackson
Jairo Davila Mora
Merlyn Ojeda
Meshanda Hobley
Vanessa Gorra
Date of Submission: 01/25/2015
Title of Assignment: Group Case Study 1
CERTIFICATION OF AUTHORSHIP: I certify that I am the author of this paper and that
any assistance I received in its preparation is fully acknowledged and disclosed in the
paper. I have also cited any sources from which I used data, ideas or words, either quoted
directly or paraphrased. I also certify that this paper was prepared by me specifically for
this course.
Student’s Signature:
***************************************************************** Instructor’s
Grade on Assignment:
Instructor’s Comments:
1- Executive Summary
CheckiO a website developed programming company for programmers initiated in 2011
who had an interest in improving their programming skills in the use of Python (a programming
language). CheckiO was founded by Alex Lyabah, as a hobby for him, his friends, and coworkers
to challenge other programmers in solving code-based problems of high complexities using a
game metaphor. Lyabah and his hired project manager, Liza Avramenko want to continue to
grow and take CheckiO to the next level, but in order to achieve this they have to seek investors
for the funding.
With not much funding, except CheckiO initial funding of $118,000 funded by venture
capital and other sources, TechStars a high tech business incubator. CheckiO has a strong
business model, but at some point in time, the company will face situations that will need
improvement. The website main source of income is through subscriptions, product sales, and
advertising. More venture capitalist investors are needed to expand CheckiO. To attract
investors, CheckiO has to address the current problems of language support, pricing, and
defining its relationship with academia and critique these problems of interest to the company
bottom line.
When considering the performance of the organization, and with these 3 major problems
evolving around CheckiO, language support, pricing, and defining its relationship with
academia. It’s in fact a priority that these problems need to be analyzed to determine possible
solutions.
The Python language CheckiO started using when they launch the website was a popular
language at the time. But, Python wasn’t the most widely used language in the computer
programming industry. So, CheckiO had to make the decision if they wanted to be among the
most sight out companies in the industry. Do you expand into alternative languages or stick with
the Python language from the start? CheckiO could survey their community based user of the
system and let them decide what they prefer and works best for them. Getting an idea of what
attracts your registered members and what features they want to and then along with explore the
cost and cost savings of implementing new languages and continuing using current language.
With the cost of considering exploring new languages and enhancing your current
language it can become very expensive. Pricing is most definitely of high priority when
considering all the aspects, the company, your sponsors, and other organizations. It had to be fair
to both the larger organizations and smaller organizations, with each company having its own
complexities. CheckiO considered and focused on selling “islands” to organizations who were
interested in CheckiO programmers. The “islands” service must be paid in advance, this
advantage would give CheckiO funds to expand. Or, CheckiO could continue and leave the
website as it currently is, pricing will continue to be the same, but no enhancements or
attractiveness has been achieved to grow the company’s capital venture.
Even though, CheckiO has to determine a language support, and pricing, the relationship
in academia has to be addressed and determined key solutions on how to get it more involved
with the company. But, relationship in academia could create setbacks, because this is a venture
into a new market that isn’t quite known. With the shortage of Computer Science majors, this
would enhance to graduation levels of students interested in a career in programming. How to
incorporate it into the teaching curriculum? CheckiO could create a website focused on
educating students in a way that engage them with attractive gaming assignments. Funding
could be a problem also, most likely it would have to come from federal and state grants, or
interest professors would have to fund the program themselves. Challenging yet intriguing!
The problem stills lies on which does the company focus on, all three major problems or
consider one. The focus on language support by adding more program languages will allow the
company to expand by attracting existing users and new users. This will not only enhance the
company and the website, it will bring them into reach with more interested and skillful
programmers, making CheckiO more appealing to their target market of user communities,
organizations, and most importantly investors.
2-Problem Identification
It is within agreement that although CheckiO has a strong yet unique business model, at
some point in time, the company will face situations that will need improvement. After further
researching CheckiO and its business model, several areas seemed to be more concerning than
others. For the most part, and considering the performance of the organization, it has become
priority that the organizations language as well as its pricing and relationship with academia be
identified and resolved.
Language barriers in an organization can be rather difficult. Whether the barrier is verbal
or formally written, this issue must be identified and well managed. For the organization
CheckiO, it was discovered that their language barrier was regarding the written coding language
Python. However, with this barrier, project manager Liza Avramenko had great reasoning to
include this in her vision. Python was identified as “the most frequently taught programming
language in introductory computer science classes.” (Jensen, 2014) With another positive
outlook on Python, it was also identified as free of charge, no licensing, and over time it was
growing rapidly throughout the web.
Along with language, pricing in an organization is essential. As discussed in the case,
many organizations have a case-by-case situation and each organization may have different
needs. In this case, three main concerns were identified that needed immediate consideration.
The three concerns are as followed:
