[Excerpt] Analysis on mobile phone R & D project management of State-owned Enterprises

Today, the project management team is stepping into most enterprises across the vast land of China, bringing unlimited vitality to enterprises. But has anyone investigated how many of these enterprises are state-owned enterprises? How many state-owned enterprises implement the so-called project management? I think these should all be the questions that top executives of state-owned enterprises should think about. We don't just think about project management, but want to analyze how many layers we can grasp in the future competition through project management.

It seems difficult for state-owned enterprises to operate projects in a scientific way. It is also an innovation for state-owned enterprises to apply the knowledge system of modern project management to projects. How can we put the saddle of project management on a state-owned enterprise right away? Here I will analyze this series of problems from the perspective of mobile phone R & D project management.
Enterprises are facing ever-changing customer needs, and many mobile phone merchants have started to switch from branded mobile phones to independent R & D. The goal is to continuously launch new products that will keep the company alive and become the "evergreen tree" in the market, and be able to make some improvements in R & D costs.Article. However, the failure rate of a R & D project is high, so enterprises have to treat it with caution. Through the analysis of the project, the following suggestions are provided for your reference.

I. Unclear functions of the Project Management Department

Senior leaders of the company define the Project Management Department as an administrative department to manage the operations of other departments. Its role is not only to lead the entire project team to implement the project, but sometimes it does not increase the workload, or even mislead engineers to make decisions. Most project managers are from technical departments. Most of them lack project management knowledge and cannot effectively grasp the "balance" Art of project management. Some project managers even participate in hardware and software design.

Strict functional definitions of project management should be adopted, and specific environments should also be determined. A project management department and Project Management Office can be established based on factors such as the number of R & D personnel and the number of startup items. However, no matter which department is set up, the following conditions must be met:

1. Support from senior leaders
For state-owned enterprises managed by legal representatives, leaders do not want to taste the fruits of reform, so they must be persuaded to believe that project management can bring benefits to the development of enterprises;

2. Management personnel who have mastered project management knowledge
With high-level support, we should also be able to pin modern project management concepts to R & D management personnel who know how to operate projects, how to Use project management to achieve 1 + 1> 2 that cannot be achieved by technology;

3. Technical engineers with certain project management knowledge
It is not enough to have a general who will take troops to fight. It is also necessary to have intention soldiers who can take the initiative to understand the general. This requires that the two have a common language.

The Project Management Department is responsible for executing the supplier contract of the company, so that all project members can clarify the project objectives, product scope and project scope, and formulate detailed project execution plans, balance all elements of project management (Progress, cost, quality, etc.), track the implementation of the project, predict project risks, and take preventive measures, coordinates various interfaces during project implementation.

The Project Management Office is suitable for multiple project R & D organizations. It is mainly responsible for formulating the company's project management development strategy, building a project management platform, and continuously maintaining and upgrading it, manage the level and skill data of project management personnel and conduct appropriate training, save the historical project data and form analysis data, and perform performance evaluation on the project management personnel.

Ii. unreasonable Project Decision-making System

Many key decision points of the project are one-person decision-making. For example, Id fangan is designed as an artistic appreciation product for the boss and adds his thoughts to the work of engineers. Natural marketing has become a proxy for the boss product. Hardware Selection has also become an excellent skill for a person. From the engineer's point of view, they pay more attention to the performance of the components, and have little cost concerns. They also defended themselves: "One or two components will not increase much cost ". Isn't the sea made up of water.

Establish a complete project decision management system. Different decision points with different impact levels can be divided into different decision levels, such as strategic decision-making, important decision-making, associated decision-making, and general decision-making, for different levels of decision-making, a corresponding decision-making system should be established. For example, the project establishment should be a strategic decision of the project, and the decision should be made by important stakeholders that affect the project's success or failure. The determination of the ID scheme is an important decision, A decision-making Group should be composed of ID engineers, senior leaders, market personnel, MD engineers, and people outside the company with certain design experience. The best solution should be determined through brainstorming. In this way, you can think about problems from multiple perspectives without prejudice, leading to mistakes in decision making.

3. Inadequate Project Management Platform

A project management platform means that if an enterprise or organization decides to manage its business through project management, it must establish a complete management system suitable for the Organization, including the following:

(1) Project Management Organization
(2) R & D project process
(3) project management training plan
(4) project management tools

Mobile phone R & D enterprises involve activities such as ID, MD, software, hardware, and production testing. Many of them need to be cross-functional organizations. For example, the design of ID must take into account the design of MD, not just think of it as a work of art, it must be a product of useful value; the software design should take into account the hardware logic design and so on. Many resources of different projects can be shared. Therefore, project management is required. There is no lack of management tools for mobile R & D enterprise project organizations, but they lack a complete project management process, which makes the project management work unorganized and informal. the interfaces of different departments are unclear and arrogant; without an effective sourcing management plan, everyone has become a business negotiator.

The source power of an Enterprise comes from R & D projects. The profit of an enterprise is naturally created by projects. The only source of sustainable competition for product advantages is the superior product development process. It is impossible to take a long time to take advantage of an outstanding design, a good opportunity, a competitor's mistake, or a lucky fortune. You cannot rely on these factors to develop products that are successful for a long time. Poor development processes will make the advantages achieved by these factors lost in a short period of time, and superior processes will always be able to find the best product opportunities and define competitive products, and put these new products into the market at a faster speed. Mobile phone R & D enterprises should unswervingly implement project management to manage projects, and should not stick to the rules and regulations of project management. Otherwise, they will add some management links without action, resulting in a waste of costs. We must develop a process system suitable for our own environment based on modern project management, and incorporate all stages of the project into the system for scientific management.

4. lack or absence of a Project Management Plan

Strictly speaking, an efficient system should not only exist in the brain, nor should it be passed over orally. It is necessary to implement it in a standardized plan. A project management plan is a prerequisite for project implementation. Many PM teams cannot develop an effective project management plan. They only know how to cook the meal, so they will be able to get back to life, they seem to have considered little. If you want to cook the food and make everyone smell it very sweet, you need to work out a detailed "Cooking" plan before cooking. Many R & D projects were passed out shortly after they were launched. The reason is that there is a lack of reasonable budget, which leads to a serious R & D cost exceeding the budget cost; lack of risk management awareness leads to a serious R & D progress; Lack of WBS benchmark plan leads to cost and progress estimation errors, unclear responsibilities and so on.

Before the project is implemented, the project manager should be aware of "never cut firewood by mistake", do not be afraid of wasting time on planning, or leave the plan stingy in his own mind, and publish it in the form of documents, after discussion, we will draw a consistent action plan. An effective project management plan has the following functions:

(1) enables unified management of project resources and effective use of resources;
(2) The Project Manager can discover hidden risks in advance, reducing the potential difficulty of the project;
(3) project team members can assume their due responsibilities, be aware of their importance to the project, and increase their enthusiasm for work, which is conducive to the progress of the project;
(4) All functional departments of the project will not shirk their responsibilities, effectively solving joint and several problems;
(5) The progress and cost of the project can be effectively controlled;
(6) The scope of the project is clearer, reducing repetitive work and increasing work efficiency;
(7) Reduce Unnecessary communication links so that team members can clearly communicate with each other;
(8) The project is coordinated to reduce the management difficulty and increase the project success rate.

5. There is no standard sourcing Management Department

Procurement Management will not only affect the progress, cost and quality of the project, but also affect the company's strategic development. The supply of materials in China affects the rise of material prices all over the world. It is neither a resource-consuming country nor how powerful China's economy is, however, about 20% of the world's materials are currently available in the market, most of which are provided through long-term supply contracts, and most of which are concentrated in China, therefore, procurement from the market will inevitably affect the unstable market. Practice shows that the long-term supply relationship can not only ensure the quality of the product, but also ensure the progress of the project. If a long-term cooperation relationship is established with the supplier, it will also get a relatively stable and favorable price, which is the productivity brought about by the relationship. In order to establish cooperation with suppliers, suppliers must also be analyzed in detail. According to Sun Tzu's Art of War, the strategy is "Heaven and Earth ". Not all suppliers are treated in the same way, but are classified into different levels according to different standards. For example, the quantity of supply sources can be divided into competitive suppliers and medium-sized suppliers, while concentrated suppliers can be divided into single-monopoly and multi-oligarchy suppliers. Therefore, different suppliers should adopt different strategies.

Currently, the importance of suppliers to the future development of mobile phone projects is not taken into account. No special department was formed to manage suppliers. They invested a lot of time in technical implementation, leading to inadequate supply of components and insufficient supply, ultimately, it affects the overall development.

For enterprises with projects as the core, in order to facilitate unified multi-project management, a sourcing management department must be established to achieve unified management of raw materials. Conducts Long-Term Analysis on suppliers and the market, understands market changes, establishes a sound sourcing case, and provides engineers with convenient internal device selection approaches, at the same time, it also saves engineers a lot of time and energy on component selection, so that they can do a good job in design. In fact, to maintain a good relationship with suppliers, we only need to grasp this point: "Friends are friends, friends are enemies, and friends are enemies ", in this way, it can take advantage to a large extent, but it is also related to other factors, such as the strength and geographical location of the enterprise.

6. The concept of time management is not strong

The emphasis on time management includes macro time management and micro time management. Macro management of time is reflected in the estimation and tracking of the progress of R & D projects. micro management is reflected in the specific time, such as the grasp of the meeting time. For a battle that can be solved within 30 minutes, we have to fight for two hours without a clear conclusion. This not only reflects the unreasonable use of time, but also shows that the meeting was not fully prepared. There are many similar items, so I will not list them one by one.

To gain the initiative in the market, enterprises must pay attention to speed and change. Speed is of course the focus on the speed of product R & D. This requires the R & D team to stick to the concept of time and analyze how to reasonably win and use time. The change is to constantly launch competitive products. Market and technological changes are moving forward at an incomparable rate in the past, so speed is the core weapon of competition.
Reasonable Use of Time and enhanced time management can shorten the R & D lifecycle. Mobile phone upgrades are fast, and the speed can produce a competitive advantage. Whoever grasps the mainstream will be able to win the market; the speed will produce a high profitability, who will first promote the product to the market, first, we can achieve sales revenue. We need to know that money has time value. speed means that there are fewer accidents, and the market will not stay for the individual, launching a new product one day later means you have to reconsider your profit.

7. Lack of formal communication management

Communication refers to the process of transmitting information, thoughts, and emotions between individuals or groups and reaching a common agreement for the purpose of setting.
From the above analysis, communication includes the following content: communication aims to deliver information, thoughts, and emotions between individuals or groups and reach a common agreement. Since communication requires a clear goal and a conclusion, let's review how many elements of communication can reach the above?

Communication Theory has formed a set of knowledge systems. Project communication management is crucial to the success of the project. A good communication plan can not only grasp the development dynamics in a timely manner, but also continuously track the demand changes of project stakeholders. According to statistics, the project manager should spend at least 70% of the time in communication, which shows the importance of communication skills to the project manager. The 70% is just an average. for mobile phone R & D projects, it will definitely be higher than this number.

Mobile phone R & D projects require multi-department collaboration. Most sub-projects have different influences on projects in other departments. In the R & D process, there is no formal communication plan, and most of the communication is achieved through verbal or informal communication. There was no communication plan before the communication, so that the communication staff did not have any preparation. Even the communication result was that everyone had no idea what they were trying to achieve. Communication results cannot form reports, and naturally no information can be published.

The project manager should do a good job of communication. Otherwise, 70% of your work time will be wasted. How can we effectively achieve the efficiency of communication? The following models are used for analysis:

Only a small part of the communication model has been set up. How can we develop effective communication plans, publish information, form performance reports, and implement the communication function, I think all these are the projects that the R & D project manager should establish their own communication management platform based on the specific environment of the enterprise.

8. The implementation philosophy of personnel at all levels is not strong

Execution is a systematic process that includes strict discussion, questioning, persistent follow-up of each other's laws and objectives, and specific implementation of responsibilities.

No company can fulfill its commitments and truly adapt to the changing environment unless Leaders at all levels have the ability to master and practice their knowledge.

Senior managers have drawn a blueprint for the development of an enterprise, set stage objectives, and planned business operations and technology application strategies for the enterprise. Unfortunately, they cannot grasp the strategic art of execution.

The R & D executives developed the project to make more profits than the previous project, and the sales profit increased by 20%. The Project Manager also made a budget plan. Most leaders did not hesitate to accept the figure. Due to lack of executive power, leaders will not question the goals proposed by the R & D leadership. As a R & D enterprise, there is no doubt about the risks. Therefore, leaders must question what is the path to achieving a higher level of development? Is there sufficient rational analysis on the target? Have you analyzed the market? Will consumers recognize your products? Do you know competitors? Is the project budget reasonable? Have you set a stage goal? If the goal is not achieved in the first stage, this is an early warning signal. Have you made any preparations for this?

If the leader is skeptical about the organization's ability to execute the program, he can raise a deeper question: "Have you selected the right person to take charge of the project? Are their responsibilities clear? What help do you need? Is your incentive mechanism effective ?" In other words, the leader will not immediately agree with the plan. He hopes to get a more detailed explanation, and he will keep asking questions until he gets a satisfactory answer. These are not only reflected in the high-level management, but also in the project manager and R & D personnel.

9. invalid document management

R & D projects need to constantly summarize and archive problems in the R & D process to provide reference for subsequent projects. This requires that a complete document management system should be established in the project management process. If document management is well performed, it can produce practical efficiency. If it is not well done, it will become product data. The R & D process involves three parts of R & D data:

(1) supporting the production of files-sketch, three-position modeling diagram, schematic diagram, PCB diagram, etc;
(2)Technical materials-FTA/CTA instructions;
(3) design documents of designers.

Mobile phone R & D project management has stricter requirements. However, in mobile phone R & D projects, documents were not paid due attention to, and documents were not handled in a timely manner.

For the current situation of R & D document management, the project management personnel can provide templates, and the responsible engineers can review and provide comments. Finally, both parties confirm or establish a set of processes. Based on the characteristics and specific environment of mobile phone R & D, the key Detection Points should submit a report, and the template can be publicly discussed and determined.

In the future market war, what kind of enterprises can take the initiative in the war? What can project management bring to enterprises? We don't know about this, but one thing is certain: in the war, the second place won't receive the bonus.