Company Context

CITIC Group is a large diversified conglomerate with major businesses across financial services, advanced materials, manufacturing, energy, and infrastructure. You are interviewing for an Engineering Manager role supporting a group-level digital engineering office that builds shared platforms used by multiple CITIC subsidiaries, including CITIC Bank, CITIC Pacific Special Steel, and CITIC Heavy Industries. The group has historically funded engineering projects bottom-up by business unit, which has led to duplicated systems, slow delivery, and weak linkage between technology spend and business outcomes.

Strategic Situation

The Group CIO and Strategy Office want to reset the next 24-month engineering portfolio. The core question is not whether to invest more in engineering, but how to ensure engineering projects align tightly with business strategy. Three strategic priorities have been set for the group: (1) grow fee-based digital revenue, (2) reduce operating cost through shared platforms and automation, and (3) improve risk and compliance resilience. You must recommend how CITIC should prioritize engineering investments across competing initiatives and define a decision framework that business and engineering leaders can use consistently.

Several projects are under consideration for funding in the next planning cycle:

Additional planning assumptions:

• Total available engineering investment budget for the next 24 months: RMB 300M
• Current engineering capacity: 220 FTEs, with only 60 FTEs available for new strategic programs
• Group target: RMB 500M annualized value creation by year 3
• Current project on-time delivery rate: 58%
• Roughly 35% of engineering spend today is estimated to be duplicative across subsidiaries

Deliverables

1. Propose a framework CITIC Group should use to evaluate whether engineering projects align with business strategy.
2. Prioritize the five initiatives and recommend which should be funded, delayed, or declined within the RMB 300M budget.
3. Quantify the trade-offs using market/business impact, strategic fit, execution feasibility, and risk.
4. Recommend governance mechanisms to keep engineering execution aligned after funding decisions are made.
5. Outline how you would communicate this portfolio decision to subsidiary leaders who may disagree.

Constraints

• Regulatory compliance work cannot be ignored because of an 18-month deadline.
• Business units are protective of local roadmaps and may resist shared platforms.
• New hiring is capped; most work must be done with existing teams or selective vendors.
• The CIO wants visible business impact within 12 months, not just long-term architecture benefits.