The Never Ending Story (End Case Study)
Q1. Identify the issues in the project initiating phase ?
During
the initiation phase difficulties that interfere will slow down a project
movement. Many different ideas leading to what the project should be and produce
will be confusing. Because here ideas and concepts are much easier to integrate
and implement when the project team is considering something solid.
In
this case study, progress
related reports only reflected the top management expectations more than
pointing to delays. Which led to defensive reports that came from both sides to
hide any wrong doing and look better. Also, we can notice a lack of
commitment from the management part,
while on the other side the project team is not providing sufficient and formal
feedback about the project status. This resulted in the lack of open and clear reporting against predefined
milestones.
The Indonesian project managers were not used
to big change management process and ignored the request of the international CEO
of c-consulting to implement formal procedures regarding time performance and
progress.
Q2. How could the scope creep have been avoided?
Based on the first question answer we can also add that when BIG decided to
request some changes to the software several times concerning the information
workflow a lot of done work was redundant. Undocumented Changes resulted in a wide
modified scope, and of course, with no fees granted.
To avoid scoop creep, breaking down
the project into minor milestones will be a good option. Minor milestones
should not go for more than one month. Also, when working with international
project staff and while determining the required task duration, leaving more
room for error will put the project under budget and ahead of the schedule for
more enhancements.
Also
it's better to collaborate with the client and produce a plan.
Because a clear and a defined scope
that is agreed on, and understood by both parties is so important to keep the
client satisfied and aware of what is included and what's not. Hence, the client
will not go into a project with unpredicted expectations of service delivery
that don't match the scope of work and result in a wide creep.
Q3. Where do you see the impact of national cultures
in this case?
When dealing with international projects,
organizations have to adopt globalized requirements to cope with other international
joint projects outside their home markets. Thus, successful business management
should deal perfectly with complex challenges that are caused by cultural
factors and other influences.
I believe that in this case, the project
dealt with different cultural backgrounds that raised two types of managements (Task
Management) that focuses on formal reports and to-do lists, and a (Relationship
Management) that relied on networking and relationships rather than planning
and going by the book. Both managements interfered negatively and impacted the planning
and the implementation process.