An analysis of the causes of project management in an online gaming company

The project faced with the company's game market operation strategy of the repeated adjustment, before the BI (business Intelligence) project, simply can not meet the diverse needs of the present, if two development, cost will be very high, if this abandoned, and very regrettable.
The "morbid" of the BI Project

The Space Network Company's large-scale network game since March 2006 on-line, has obtained the market good reaction, now, has expanded to 6 regions 6 groups of servers.

As the CIO of the company, Lippett to maintain the pressure of the current good situation, so, in August 2006, after consulting the boss, decided to implement BI (business intelligence) project.

The reason for preparing for the BI project is that Lippett takes into account: Online games in the early days, the need for good ideas, planning, art, procedures, etc., but to a certain stage, the main challenge will be the balance of the game (role) and the mentality of the player, balance determines whether the player will be long-term participation in the game. Improper handling may lose a large number of gamers.

Lippett's idea is to use BI to regularly collect historical data from some players in the game. The historical data are extracted, transformed, and imported into the Data Warehouse. You then import the multidimensional database further. Use BI to build the analysis platform. Through the network, the game manufacturer or the operator may inspect the analysis result at any time, thus obtains the game balance the statistics, the monitoring game behavior, grasps the player dynamics, gives the game the bug, the existence balance question and the regional marketing strategy makes the analysis and the adjustment.

Lippett This plan get Mister's strong support, but let him not think is, it is this project, in the future there are many "morbid."

First, project planning is at the beginning of the game operation, but the game after the market, the operation strategy has been adjusted, the project is based on a regional server to statistics the behavior of the player, the results of analysis, but the reality is that many players are concentrated in a few lively server groups, the region's boundaries have not existed For example: many different regions of the players are concentrated in Beijing, Shanghai and other server groups.

This is a problem for the Project module for regional analysis and adjustment of the marketing strategy plan.

Moreover, the network game market is changeable, the strategy adjusts unceasingly. The initial full charge model has now changed the way for free and charging to exist simultaneously. Previous project planning has not been itemized, and it is vital to get the different behavior analysis of free and charged players to adjust the game operation.

Also, the initial project planning and analysis, because the focus on the game itself and ignore other aspects of the strategy, there have been some mistakes. For example: At that time, the company's business processing system is not perfect, the data source and data quality became a problem, did not pay attention to the other departments of BI required decision analysis system.

How to "cure"

Lippett for this and project development company, if two development, first, the project cost will increase a lot, far beyond the budget. In addition, the market constantly changes to the game to adjust the operation strategy, and then how to develop? If the company increased it research and development, not only is the cost problem, the development company will only be the data flow of the system to tell you, will not involve the content of the code, which for future development to improve the difficulty.

Now, this project is a lot of problems, and the disease is not light, the thought of the project currently exists a series of problems, and the future may need to implement modules, Lippett headaches.

If you stop this project now, the company's internal research and development efforts to redesign, it is tantamount to declaring the project failed, but if the continuation of the current system, taking into account the continuous adjustment of corporate strategy, "treatment" as if it became impossible. Whether to stop or to continue, this makes Lippett sleepless.

There are more ways than problems.

Huangying

The enterprise should fully communicate with the project company and work closely together to complete the project. If the enterprise to redesign the project unilaterally, one is the input cost is too large, and then the technical force may not be able to reach the level of professional project companies.

Faced with the situation in the case, the author suggested that the BI project should be able to continue. This is because: first of all, real-time analysis of the network game business decision-making is of great significance. Change is the eternal truth in the marketplace, who can first adapt to market changes who is the winner of the market.

Secondly, the company already has the foundation for the BI system construction, and invests the capital and the manpower.

Again, the new system in the implementation of the problem is very normal things, as long as can find the key points of the problem and timely adjustment, the system will be able to operate and play its due role.

Inability to meet operational requirements

It is the core of the case that the new BI system cannot meet the requirement of the actual operation decision of the enterprise in the process of implementation. The author thinks that to solve this problem successfully, we have to answer the following three key points: what is the cause of the project problem? What are the solutions for these reasons? Who is better at the moment to solve these problems?

First, according to the material provided by the case, there are three main reasons why the BI system cannot perform its normal decision support function.

The first aspect, because the company internal business processing system is not perfect caused. Due to BI's ETL (data extraction, conversion, loading) The enterprise database system is largely based on the existing internal business processing systems such as CRM, ERP and OA, so the maturity and perfection of these business processing systems will determine the source and quality of BI data to a large extent. Without solving this problem, even if BI's planning analysis strategy is better, it will not be able to provide real and useful decision information to the enterprise.
The second aspect, because the network game market changeable characteristic is decided. This mainly brings two influence: The network game market has the changeable characteristic, causes the network game company's operation strategy to have to adjust unceasingly. For example, the charging model from the full fee into a fee and free combination, while the general BI system planning is a very important assumption is the company's business model, the variability of corporate strategy this undoubtedly to the BI system to put forward a higher scalability requirements; Network game player's preference has certain uncertainty, Create difficulties in data collection and analysis mode setting.

Third, because of the previous research and planning of BI system, not fully consider the impact of the above two factors and do some targeted design caused.

The power to lend to others

Therefore, the problem-solving needs to focus on the following three areas:

First, improve the company's internal business processing system, strengthen the other departments of the company analysis of the BI support functions, to ensure data source and data quality. According to the author's consulting experience, the company's internal business processing system problems, one may be the business process system itself design or technical problems, there may be the company's own business model and business management system has a certain problem, resulting in business processing system can not operate properly. Therefore, we should carefully analyze the internal business operations and business management system problems, and the existing business processing system for testing and optimization.