Case Study $($Assignments $2024)$: Luucky Casino Group

Company Profile

Luucky Casino Group came into being around the year $2000$ and was licenced in terms of the National Gambling Act in South Africa. Luucky Casino Group began with one medium sized gambling hall in Johannesburg, where a variety of games of chance, including slot machines, roulette, poker and blackjack among others, could be played by the casino$$s patrons or customers.

The casino did well, and in $2003,$ opened gambling halls in Tshwane, Cape Town, Mahikeng$,$ Durban, Bloemfontein, Polokwane$$ and East London. Given the casino$$s statistical advantage that is built into every game, over time the gambling halls made great profits and Luucky Casino Group decided to expand each gambling hall to include indoor amusement parks for adults, extravagant hotels, spectacular fountains, stage shows and musicals, bars, shopping centres, restaurants and even fun activities for the kids.

External business environment

There are many casinos in the same geographical areas as Luucky Casino Group. This means that there is strong competition for patrons or customers and those casinos that offer the best gambling experience get the patrons and the profits. The gambling industry has also been impacted by technological advances over the years and patrons are now expecting spectacular electronic slot machines, video poker and even online gambling. Luucky Casino Group have started to invest in these new gambling products.

Then, of course, keeping costs down is very important for maintaining profitability and having enough money to invest in new products. From a technological perspective, Luucky Casino Group is focussing on improving its IT services, innovating rapidly with new electronic gambling products and being more productive with less resources.

Internal business environment

The Information Technology $($IT$)$ department and IT staff at Luucky Casino Group does not interact directly with the patrons. The IT department and IT staff at Luucky Casino Group only interact with internal gambling and hospitality staff, which includes casino managers, administrators, dealers, marketing staff, supply chain staff, hospitality staff and all other non$-$IT staff.

IT department structure and context

The IT executive runs the IT department. She is competent and well$-$liked amongst the IT staff and she has a good rapport with the casino gambling and hospitality staff. Nevertheless, the IT executive has not studied IT Service Management $($ITSM$)$ and runs the IT department using traditional technology divisions. The current IT team structure in the IT department is shown in Figure $1.$

Figure $1$

Figure $1$: The current IT team structure in the IT department

Significant IT problems$/$issues$/$circumstances at the company

The IT executive had heard about the practice of combining IT development and IT support teams to improve the entire software lifecycle but was unsure what a typical combined team would look like where an IT development team was combined with an IT operations team. In particular, the IT executive needed to understand what typical roles were required for the combined team that she wanted to establish.

The IT executive wanted to put together a combined team because the current IT team structure in the IT department created problems for the IT executive. The IT team structure in the IT department resulted in an inability to quickly take advantage of new IT service opportunities, resulted in suboptimal resource use, bad decision making, lack of transparency, hidden silo agendas and increased problematic organisational politics.

The IT executive had a dilemma about how to speed up IT development so that the casino could become a leader in the market, but still have stability in the IT operational environment to prevent negative impact on the casino and its customers. Currently, the business requirements for new developments change all the time and when the development team hands over a new IT service to the IT service operations staff there are always incidents, problems, disruptions and conflict. She would appreciate some general, high$-$level guidance to help her solve this dilemma.