MBA 6951
Unit IV Case Study
Managing Complex Projects – MBA 6951
Introduct
ion
Park industries was awarded a contract by the Scott Corporation to conduct research
and development of and new product line. The project was expected to take 10 months to
complete and if their performance was satisfactory there was potential for follow on projects
over the next five years. Scott Corporation ran into some financial issues and informed Park
Industries that there would be a five month gap between the end of the current project and the
start of the follow on project. This left the project manager with the dilemma of splitting up
his team to work other projects and risk losing them, or build a reserve out of existing funds
that would carry the team through the five month gap in projects.
Effective Project
Management
From the information provided it appears that the project manager was effective at
managing the project and his firm was effective at staffing his team with the appropriate
people. It can be inferred that the project manager was able to take the customer’s input and
develop a new product that they were happy with. The project appears to have maintained its
timeline and is projected to be complete within the ten month timeline set forth by the
customer. The area that it appears the project manager was lacking is controlling project cost
and management of personnel. His intent was to use the management reserve from this
project to fund his team through the period of no project described as the bathtub period in
the case study. By doing this he is mismanaging personnel within the organization and
taking talent away from other potential equally as important projects that the firm may be
working. From a cost perspective this is reducing the overall profitability of this project by
, $200,000. The contract of the current Scott Corporation project is a firm fixed, according to
Kerzner (2017), “if the project is under a firm- fixed price contract, then the management
reserve becomes extra profit for the performing
organization” (Kerzner, 2017, p 512). By trying to prevent the current project team
members from working on other projects throughout the five month bathtub period the
project manager was effectively cutting the organizations profits by $200,000.
Work
Sequence
A Gantt chart is an effective method of depicting work flow and total time for a
project. This is a great way to visualize the project across time to identify both efficiencies
and friction points. Below is a Gantt chart outlining the work sequence of the Scott Project.
Risk
Mitigation
Risk is a valuable consideration project managers must consider throughout the
course of a project. According to Doval (2019), “the risk deals with the uncertainty of the
events that
could affect the project” (p. 2). There are risks associated with the work sequence of the
Scott Project. The first risk is during the market research task of the project. Due to the
relatively short timeframe of this project there is an overlap of market research and research
and development. There is risk associate here due to the unknowns of the trends and market
share of the new product line could increase the execution time of this task. The most
effective way to mitigate this risk is to keep in close communication with the stakeholders
Unit IV Case Study
Managing Complex Projects – MBA 6951
Introduct
ion
Park industries was awarded a contract by the Scott Corporation to conduct research
and development of and new product line. The project was expected to take 10 months to
complete and if their performance was satisfactory there was potential for follow on projects
over the next five years. Scott Corporation ran into some financial issues and informed Park
Industries that there would be a five month gap between the end of the current project and the
start of the follow on project. This left the project manager with the dilemma of splitting up
his team to work other projects and risk losing them, or build a reserve out of existing funds
that would carry the team through the five month gap in projects.
Effective Project
Management
From the information provided it appears that the project manager was effective at
managing the project and his firm was effective at staffing his team with the appropriate
people. It can be inferred that the project manager was able to take the customer’s input and
develop a new product that they were happy with. The project appears to have maintained its
timeline and is projected to be complete within the ten month timeline set forth by the
customer. The area that it appears the project manager was lacking is controlling project cost
and management of personnel. His intent was to use the management reserve from this
project to fund his team through the period of no project described as the bathtub period in
the case study. By doing this he is mismanaging personnel within the organization and
taking talent away from other potential equally as important projects that the firm may be
working. From a cost perspective this is reducing the overall profitability of this project by
, $200,000. The contract of the current Scott Corporation project is a firm fixed, according to
Kerzner (2017), “if the project is under a firm- fixed price contract, then the management
reserve becomes extra profit for the performing
organization” (Kerzner, 2017, p 512). By trying to prevent the current project team
members from working on other projects throughout the five month bathtub period the
project manager was effectively cutting the organizations profits by $200,000.
Work
Sequence
A Gantt chart is an effective method of depicting work flow and total time for a
project. This is a great way to visualize the project across time to identify both efficiencies
and friction points. Below is a Gantt chart outlining the work sequence of the Scott Project.
Risk
Mitigation
Risk is a valuable consideration project managers must consider throughout the
course of a project. According to Doval (2019), “the risk deals with the uncertainty of the
events that
could affect the project” (p. 2). There are risks associated with the work sequence of the
Scott Project. The first risk is during the market research task of the project. Due to the
relatively short timeframe of this project there is an overlap of market research and research
and development. There is risk associate here due to the unknowns of the trends and market
share of the new product line could increase the execution time of this task. The most
effective way to mitigate this risk is to keep in close communication with the stakeholders
