Project
Management Case Study
Exploring a
Project Management Case Study: Kids Press that publishes children’s
books. Reviewing case studies of completed projects provides a good
means of learning about project management. As the company grew, it
encountered numerous problems with managing publishing projects that
extended over several months. They missed deadlines, ran behind
schedule and over budget, so Kids Press took steps to improve the
project management process.
Reviewing the
Project Management Case Study Background: Jill St. Thomas
established Kids Press in 1986 as a small publisher of children’s
books. At the outset, Ms. St. Thomas was the publisher and editor
and also did much of the writing. Eventually, she hired more
employees. Business grew when she introduced a new series of books
about a character called the Dittle Bug. By late 1995, Kids Press
had nearly 30 employees. As a result of the sudden growth, Ms. St.
Thomas began losing control of her company. Kids Press began to
suffer from poor quality products, and experts predicted a drop in
sales. Employee morale was low, and no one knew what needed to be
accomplished at each step in the publishing process. The process had
not been streamlined, and it was taking nearly one year to publish
each book. To meet the demand of the market and to increase profit,
Kids Press had to develop a system for managing
projects.
UK Financial Services Project Management Case
Study: Is your organization being beastly to you?
A new Project
Management Case Study entitled "Is your Organization being Beastly
to you?" has been added to the Team Management Site. Steve Botham,
describes how the Team Management Profile was used in a UK financial services
organization as part of a change management initiative. The Author
explores the challenge of change and how change affects people. More
on the Team Management Site, please visit them at: http://www.tms.com.au/
A Construction
Project Management Case Study —Some Personal Observations: Editor's comment: The following piece was
sent by one of their friends demonstrating one corporate
management's attitude towards project management expertise as an
intellectual asset – and the cost of failing to understand the need
for retaining corporate learning.
The sad truth
about the Project Management Guidelines that we developed is that
when they down-sized the company they absolutely decimated the
Engineering & Construction Division (we went from 160 staff to
39). They cut most deeply where all of the real expertise and grey
hair was resident. They let almost all of the Engineering and
Construction expertise goes, and the YYY initiative just stalled.
The deal was -
with deregulation - they expected that the capital budget would go
from $500 million to only $40 million. Of course, no sooner had they
let everyone go, then they got the major offshore project approved
($1.5 billion) another phase to an international project (another $1
billion) and were considering a major arterial pipeline ($1 billion)
and an XXX project ($1 billion). Three months after they cut
everyone loose, I got a call from a former colleague to say that my
old boss was looking for my phone number because he was looking for
a project manager for the XXX Project. Like me - almost all of my
former colleagues were now busy working for someone else. .
.
They hired so
many new guys - (and most of the staff that was kept on was
definitely not the visionary types that had embraced the Guidelines)
- that they merely muddled their way through in a purely reactive
mode as they had always done. Apparently, they are just as bad as
before when it comes to project delivery due to the shortage of
experienced personnel. It really is unfortunate that after all that
time and efforts they still don't get it.
We knew that we
were good at delivering major projects and although I thought that
we were terrible overall (we were horrible at delivering the smaller
projects) it was not until I saw what the other Oil & Gas
companies were doing that I realized that compared to the rest of
the industry we were "World Class" (in the Oil & Gas business).
Now with all of the senior guys gone, that ability to successfully
deliver projects has suffered . . .
This software
is a great tool when the PM process and cultural desire are there.
Unfortunately, most companies still think that the software can cure
their project management ills. You know - it's the "build it and
they will come" syndrome . . . I have fought to get them to
understand that it is "process, process, process" and that this
software is only a tool. What good is a compass if you don't know
where you are and where you need to go? It can keep you on a
heading, but if you are heading in the wrong direction entirely, you
only feel better for it because you have this talisman (tool) . .
.
At every
company that I have been at, the modus operandi seems to be "let's
not admit that our projects can be done better, because that would
be admitting that we haven't been doing our jobs . . ." They
implement this software because they are told to (it is usually
driven by Finance) and then they malign the software when they don't
get the millions of dollars in savings that they (rightfully) should
be getting.
Very few
clients have even a handful of PMP's, although they are starting to
understand the value in PMI® education and the application in the
workplace. The best client I had in this regard was a major US Oil
Company. They claim that they have saved over $5 million a year on
their offshore platforms because of the process changes we made that
were enabled by this software. They told me that they are saving a
further $1 million a year on their drilling projects too for the
same reasons. They are also a real proponent of PMI® and have an
excellent project management process, and a formal Project
Management Centre of Expertise that regularly publishes educational
materials and provides training and mentoring.
