Project Management Case Analysis

Abstract:

The biggest difference between a successful project and a failed project is project management. Once there was such a project, which was a new business for customers; For integrators, most of the technologies were never used. Generally, such a project has a great risk, so please take a look at the Project Management ......

1. Project Description

In a certain year, Company B (hereinafter referred to as Company B) learned that enterprise A wants to build a customer service center, provide customers with consultation, query, commission, complaint and other services related to their products, and hope to use various computer and communication technologies as much as possible, it provides customers with fast, accurate, and diverse services (including telephone, fax, web, and email.

1.1 Background

The customer service center is in the bud at most in China.

Only a small part of enterprise A's original business operations are processed by computers, and there is no such organization as the customer service center.

Company B is a typical transaction processing system based on UNIX and TCP/IP. It knows little about CTI required to establish a customer service center, and has never tried web development.

All in all, this is a new field, and there are great risks while opportunities exist.

Result 1.2

Company B adopts a variety of technologies and products that have never been used in the project: Browser/Web server/database server structure, CTI technology, and queuing machine, and independently develops voice fax servers, complete the project on time. The completion of the project laid the foundation for subsequent cooperation, and soon the second phase of the contract was signed.

Both the customer and the company are satisfied with the results of the project, and the project members are happy to participate in the project.

2. Project Process

So how does Company B successfully complete this risky project? After the project is completed, both the company and the customer believe that there is a qualified project manager. Next, let's take a look at what the project manager has done during the project implementation process?

2.1 Initial Stage

After the project intention is clear, the first thing the project manager does is: Check the information, determine the assistant, and formulate the next plan.

The materials can be consulted in two aspects: the technical implementation of the customer service center and the business operation of enterprise.

The main work of the assistant is to complement the project manager in terms of technology and business.

The next plan is to communicate face-to-face with the customer, understand the customer's expectations and the cognition of the project, understand the customer's business, learn more about the relevant technology, and prepare a solution proposal.

All three aspects of work are very important. The documents show that the project manager is aware of the difficulties and risks of the project and starts to take measures to avoid risks; identifying assistants lays the foundation for the establishment of the project implementation team. The purpose of the next plan is to define the project. Its purpose is to make the expectations of Enterprise A and Company B as consistent as possible, this lays the foundation for the success of the project. It should be noted that the project definition is the first priority for any project, and whether it appears in the second place in writing, but as a project manager, be sure to know what the customer sees as a successful project? We also need to know what kind of products or services the project team can provide to customers? If they do not match, at least one party needs to taste the failure in this project.

In the process of communicating with enterprise A, project members should learn business knowledge from customers, master the corresponding business terms, and maintain a good relationship with key personnel in the spirit of "Three people must have our teachers" attitude. These lay the foundation for smooth communication with customers during subsequent project implementation. In fact, the failure of many projects lies in that it personnel only look at the project from the IT perspective, which is very narrow. In the end, it is only a tool used for business operations and should play a role, it is necessary to find the integration points with the business process, otherwise each is different, even if the project is technically perfect, it is also a pile of waste. There are no many conflicts between business and it. The conflicts are more due to the communication and understanding between business personnel and IT personnel.

At this stage, the project manager has two other things to do very well. One is to let the senior leaders of the company pay attention to the project, so as to obtain the support from the company's senior leadership, this is very important for other departments to cooperate in the subsequent project implementation process. One is to form a good division of labor and cooperation relationship with the sales manager to complete their respective work, and always share the project information. In many projects, project personnel and sales personnel are often isolated or even opposite. In the end, they can only fail.

2.2 execution phase

After the contract is signed, the project manager and assistant will be assigned and set up an implementation team. The advantage of this is that project information will not be lost. Of course, in many companies, pre-sales project managers and after-sales project managers are separated, so a very important task is that the company should have standardized document management, to ensure the maximum retention of project information.

After analysis, the Project Manager dispatched personnel from various departments to form a project team, and then held the first project meeting. Based on the company's actual situation, the project manager encouraged and mobilized the team to report the project's objectives and time, assign responsibilities to each person. Because many new technologies are used in the project, each member has a specific task. the freshness and sense of responsibility make the team a much better atmosphere than other projects in the company during the same period. At the same time, the Project Manager also noticed that the sales manager was absorbed into the project team. It turns out that with the active cooperation of the sales manager, it is much easier to communicate with the customer.

The project organization structure and roles are as follows.

In view of the rich experience of the project members, the Project Manager can give full play to his or her ability to grasp the technology, keep abreast of the technical progress of the project members, and give necessary guidance and help, finally, the system successfully avoids risks brought about by new technologies.

After the project organization structure and role are determined, the project manager organizes "system architecture designer" members to work together and further refine the WBS (Work Breakdown) based on the previously submitted plan) and project implementation plan. This data maximizes the enthusiasm of the backbone staff of the project team, and also helps them establish authority so that the project work can go hand in hand.

The WBS (working subdivision) of this project is as follows:

After a plan is developed, the success or failure of the project depends on the plan execution and the ability to respond to the actual situation. Compared with technical personnel, the project manager focuses on resource scheduling, monitoring and control progress, and guiding. Communication between the project manager and various personnel is an effective means to ensure smooth operation of the project.

As the saying goes: grain and grass are the first. In the project implementation, in addition to the personnel in place, the Project Manager attaches great importance to the timely delivery of various resources, pay attention to the cooperation with the administrative departments and commercial departments, and prepare the development of equipment rooms and various equipment and software; when enterprise A needs to develop software and install equipment, the relevant conditions are also notified and confirmed in advance. If some devices are not in place, find a solution. Some projects fail because the project manager only looks at project management from a technical point of view, and even thinks that the content should be prepared in advance by sales or other departments, but the project team should be the most clear, in the end, these events often affect the working atmosphere of the project, or even lead to project delays.

Depending on the project, the project manager determines that the development of application software is divided into two stages: the first stage is to complete the function development, the second stage is the interface validation and performance optimization. Make sure that software development is easier to control.

Because the first stage was developed within company B, the progress was still relatively smooth, but in the second stage, the customer's participation was greatly improved due to on-site development, although the human resources implemented by the project are supplemented to some extent, it also brings obvious disadvantages (the project members did not realize it at first ), because the participating customer staff will submit some modification requirements to the project team members at any time, the project members will be responsive at the beginning, and later found that some requirements are necessary, but some requirements are immature, it has changed several times back and forth, especially as the project progresses, which has an increasing negative impact on the project. After careful communication with the project members, the Project Manager will discuss the countermeasures with the sales personnel, and finally "give the customer a sense of reason, make sense of Emotion" to persuade the customer that the contract is the premise. If necessary, the customer should consider maturity as much as possible, but all changes should be notified to the Project Manager in formal form in writing. In this way, the problem is quickly controlled. Of course, there is a very important premise to achieve this effect: the work of the project team has always been fruitful and won the trust of Enterprise. Many projects are being done. As the party responsible for project implementation often loses the trust of the customer, it is difficult to obtain the customer's understanding and support when encountering problems. In the end, it is only possible to blame the customer for their deliberate martyrdom.

In the project implementation process, internal members also experienced some problems, such as their work habits, and even some purely personal tasks will be introduced into the project, this has a negative impact on the working atmosphere of the project. At the beginning, the Project Manager paid attention to informal communication channels with all project members, listened to their speeches, and made their emotions available for dispatch; regularly held formal meetings, inform the project progress, problems, and new plans to ensure that the project runs in a unified direction. The project atmosphere is active during non-regular dinners. A fair and objective work environment is established to ensure consistency, make every member feel respected. Some projects tend to focus only on technical implementation, rather than the psychological feelings of members, reducing work efficiency, and finally failing to complete the project on time and quality.

As the project involves both business and technical fields, the benefits of the project manager advocating the principle of allowing customers to actively participate in project implementation are:

Project implementation is transparent to customers, improving customers' trust in company B

The active involvement of end users makes the software more suitable for business needs and easier to obtain customer satisfaction.

Through close cooperation with end users, Company B can better understand business needs and reserve relevant knowledge and human resources for future expansion of other similar enterprises.

2.3 end stage

In the project implementation phase, the project manager focuses on the following work:

Summarize and hand over archive resources (such as devices and documents) to enable the company to continuously accumulate relevant knowledge.

Provide suggestions on the development of software products for the company's leadership to make decisions. The purpose is to continue to expand the market.

The commendation and Final gathering of the project members are the recognition of the member's work, and the recognition of the members for the implementation of the project ".

3. Summary and Analysis

In fact, any project may encounter problems during its implementation. evaluating whether a project is successful cannot be based on the number of problems encountered, the standard should be to implement pre-determined indicators on time and quality, such as system functions and system performance.

This project also encountered many problems, such:

Customer demand changes

Resource in place

Member conflicts

These problems are encountered in most projects. The solution is actually very simple. Please refer:

Customer requirement changes. Understand the customer's business, use the customer's language, think about the problem from the customer's perspective, and gain the customer's trust. In this way, the customer will finally think about the problem for you. In fact, most customers are rational, and the problem lies in every step we make when implementing the project.

Resources are in place. Understand and respect the work of relevant departments or partners, so that they can also understand and respect our work and cooperate with us; get the support of leaders; when the original resources are not in place, do not go all the way to the dark, you can find a replacement method.

Member conflict. Or that principle-understanding and respect, advocating mutual understanding and respect in the project, seeking for the same. Differences have two meanings: 1. They are purely personal spaces, which will enrich the color of the project; 1. Each Member has different responsibilities in the project work. Similarly, there are two meanings of deposit: one is to explore common interests and topics and shorten the distance between each other; the other is to share part of the work, and there must be strict standards.

In addition to the necessary basic project methods and management tools (such as planning and budgeting), the project manager must have a clear understanding of the project background and objectives, the most important thing is the skill of interacting with people. The biggest difference between a successful project manager and a failed project manager is how to deal with people, customers, company leaders, and project members.