Case Study – The Blue Spider Project 1. Discuss the project management organization on the project. Strengths? Weaknessess? Recommendations. Parks Corporation used a matrix project management organization on the Blue Spider Project. It was a multi-disciplinary team where the members came from different functional units such as Research and Development, Engineering, Manufacturing, Quality Control, Purchasing, and Finance. Gary Anderson, the Project Manager, was responsible for the project but his responsibility for performance of the individual phases of the work to be accomplished on the project remained with the functional managers. Anderson assigned, monitored, and coordinated work among the project team. But, the functional managers had …show more content…
Parks Corporation should have appointed an experienced project manager to run the Blue Spider project and Gary Anderson, who was an experienced engineer, should have been made the assistant project manager with the responsibility of managing the project’s R&D activities. Anderson was too inexperienced as a project manager and really had no clue what the true responsibilities were for managing a project except what he might have learned in his MBA program. 2. Project requirements needed to be clear and specific. In order to achieve successful project management and implementation, Anderson needed to ensure the requirements for the Blue Spider Project were clearly stated and written down in detail, so everyone involved in the project clearly understood the requirements. And, everyone needed to know what was not included in the Blue Spider Project. 3. Regular and effective communication was needed. If effective communication channels were established that let team members share their knowledge and skills Anderson could have delivered the right understanding of the project requirements to all the team members involved. All types of communication helps build a bridge between team members and stakeholders who have the responsibility to detect potential problems, clarify details, and maintain trust. 4.
Larson, E., & Gray, C. (2010). Project management, the managerial process. (5th ed., p. 158).
In a matrix structure, each employee answers to two immediate supervisors: a department supervisor and a project manager. The department supervisor is charged with overseeing employees in a functional area such as marketing or engineering. Project supervisors manage a specific and often impermanent project. They absorb employees from various functional areas to complete their project teams. This kind of organizational structure has several advantages especially if the project managers identify their team strengths and weakness early. Directing the staff with effective leadership skills is a key role as a project manager. A clear direction of the project from start to completion is vital. Therefore, the project managers must carry top notch planning and organizational skills. To follow the WBS and have a clear understanding of the importance of remaining on budget throughout the entire project is mandatory. The experienced project manager must keep planning, staffing, budgeting and scheduling and other control techniques under wrap, by utilizing their administrative skill according to Project Management, (Kerzner, 2013). Although the administrative and other techniques are important, in this particular project, each project manager must work closely as a team member and example. Building the team and each departmental manager into a working cohesive team, could be the true
Answer: It should been done after project. The reason is normally managers got the data after R&D projects before they make the decision of profit. The profit was not certain before and during R&D projects.
Project management is short term; it has a beginning, an end, and has identified steps to take throughout the process. The steps of project management are as follows: proposal, initial investigation, detailed investigation, development and testing, trial, operation and closure, as well as, the evaluation. There are measurable benefits to using project management within an organization for certain key objectives or processes that need
Gray, C. F. & Larson, E. W. (2008). _Project Management: The Managerial Process_. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hills Companies, Inc.
(cite) explained that risk management is the decision-making process to identify threats, vulnerabilities, and impacts of the threats on business objectives. In the Blue Spider (BS) project, it was clear from the beginning that the organization did not manage risk properly. The problem began when Henry Gable, as the director of engineering, made the unethical decision to lie about the project specifications. The unethical decision by Gable would be the key reason of many risks faced by Gary Anderson throughout the project. Furthermore, (cite) explained that there are five risk response strategies that an organization could take. The strategies are listed as mitigating risk, avoiding risk, sharing risk, retaining risk, and transferring risk. It is clear that Anderson did not maintain risk assessment and response plan since the beginning of the project.
Any successful project management, regardless of the organizational structure, is only as good as the individuals and leaders who are managing the key functions. Project management is not a single-person operation; it requires a group of individuals dedicated to the achievement of a specific goal.
Larson, E.W. and Gray, C.F. (2012, p. 214). Project Management: The Managerial Process, 5th Ed. McGraw-Hill Learning Solutions. Boston, MA.
Through time and days, a memory will be remembered. A loved one you care for, such as family, friends and even an idol of course. For me there are others who I wish were still alive. If I was able to bring a person back to the world and alive once again, this person will be a talented musician named Hide matsumoto.
“A matrix organizational structure represents the middle ground between functional and project structures. Personnel often report both to a functional manager and one or more project managers” (Schwalbe, 2014). In the CDB project Corporate Banking, Corporate Trust, and Consumer banking involve to this project. Project Management Office is a good way to coordinate the contradiction between those divisions.
6. Is it true when you enter project management, you either go up the organization or out the door?
The following pages focus on analyzing the development of the Blue Spider Project at Parks Corporation. The Introduction presents some of the most important factors that determine the success of projects, and that will be used in this analysis. The paper continues with the presentation of the steps of the Blue Spider Project in order to determine how and why the project was planned as presented. The problems identified in the case of the Blue Spider Project are also discussed. The major issues that influenced the development of the project are analyzed in this section in order to determine how the project was significantly influenced by them and what effects they determined. There is also a Recommendations section. The Conclusions section presents some of the most important issues addressed by this paper.
The Blue Spider Project is an example of a situation where the project manager show lack of understanding of the life-cycle for project management and the inability to leverage the
In the process of going from a non-project driven firm to a project-driven one, the greatest resistance might come from the executives including the board members, company owners and the vice president. The strong and rigid culture has been instilled in the company since 50 years and as a result, the president's preaching fell on deaf ears. Authoritative support is necessary to execute such strategies and it seems that for Macon Inc., that will be the most difficult one.
In order to achieve their business objective, project management and the used methodology are key factor which will be responsible for the success or failure of this project.