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Final Graded Case Study: Comprehensive Project Analysis, Part III

Project Implementation and Execution

With a successful project kick off meeting behind him, DiBello felt that things were going quite well. After robust planning, he wanted to ensure alignment within the team and others in the organization to the overall vision. At McKenzie's direction, he also engaged several quality experts to help the team implement a software quality management program to make sure that the end product meets requirements and satisfies users. The team learned to use multiple Ishikawa tools, such as development flowcharts and cause-and-effect diagrams, that would help them analyze and correct any problems that surfaced along the way. When they finished the exercises, DiBello filed the Ishikawa tools and resources on his hard drive, making a mental note to upload them to the project's Google Site at some point.

As the project proceeded through the first few weeks, DiBello's project plan guided the team though multiple project streams that could operate in parallel: development of portal site templates and interface design (Taurus web design), interviews with product specialists to create multimedia content and assessments (content team), and specifications for site architecture, servers and security protocols (internal IT and project team).

During the first month, DiBello also noted that the team seemed to progress smoothly through the "forming" and "storming" stages of the Tuckman model. As the Project Manager, he seized every opportunity to emphasize team building, collaboration and tolerance for each other's different viewpoints.

***

It wasn't until the first week of March that DiBello noticed that several of the Phase II content deadlines had been missed. The Content Specialists were responsible for working with SMEs and salespeople to meet an aggressive schedule of creating and updating various multimedia assets for each product offering, but at least eight of the products were now behind schedule. If content development, which was scheduled to occur in parallel with the development of the portal's Content Management System, continued to be delayed, it would mean that content uploading and site testing would not be able to start on schedule, creating a cascading series of project delays. DiBello immediately went down the hall to find out what was happening in the content process.

Jonathan Brant was in the middle of editing a slide when DiBello came to ask about the deadlines. Displaying considerable aggravation, he complained to DiBello that the SME's were not being responsive, which was making it difficult for them to get what they needed to write and update material. However, when DiBello approached some of the SME's, they each expressed frustration that the content specialists seemed to be doing "favors" for some of their friends in the sales department. In other words, instead of focusing on content for the portal, they were creating custom client presentations that the sales support people should have been doing instead. One SME felt that he was being used to gather data for these presentations instead of answering questions about the products. Upon closer scrutiny, this corresponded to higher content specialist invoices over the

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past month, perhaps reflecting hours spent doing out of scope work for the sales department.

To compound the schedule variances, DiBello learned that Taurus was behind on developing a key interactivity feature allowing sales associates to communicate directly with each other and share helpful information through blogs and forums. It turned out that Taurus didn't have a developer with the right expertise to create this functionality, and they were still trying to hire someone who could do it. DiBello had recently documented the workflow for the user interactivity feature in a network diagram. With no buffers built into the expected duration for each activity, he realized the delay in coding would push back testing and piloting, impacting the overall project schedule:

Aware that there was no flexibility in the HighLEARN launch date, DiBello needed to compress the schedule somehow to get back on track. He wasn't sure if there was an opportunity to "fast track" the schedule by changing sequential activities to happen in parallel. The only other option was to "crash" the project schedule by adding developer resources to expedite coding and get the feature ready for testing on time. With some Hightower executives complaining about costs for a custom- built portal, he knew it would be challenging to get more resources.

When DiBello returned to his desk after meeting with the Taurus account manager, he sighed upon finding that his in-box was filled with new questions from McKenzie, the Sales Division leaders, marketing people, and the Learning and Development folks ‐ all requesting information and status updates. Frustrated that no one took the time to access the Google site that he set up specifically to post project updates, DiBello spent the rest of his afternoon communicating to stakeholders and sending them individual responses. He wondered if any of the recipients even bothered to read his detailed responses because, even though they confirmed receipt of messages, they asked the same questions repeatedly. With many more stakeholders than he expected, and everyone expecting immediate feedback, DiBello was spending a substantial percentage of his time writing emails to stakeholders.

While responding to one of the sales managers about his request to add a virtual coaching feature, DiBello got a knock on his office door. Monica Ianucci, one of the Content Specialists, shut the door and immediately started venting her frustration with Ricardo Contin, the Director of Learning and Development. She was refusing to work with him since he has been openly dismissive of the project

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and hasn't provided any of the onboarding material or employee ID's that she needs to populate the personalized assessment system. As a result, Monica's can't make progress on piloting the assessments, and the people assigned to pilot them are sitting idle.

DiBello knows that Contin, who works closely with Allard, the Chief Marketing Executive, is threatened by the project. Although he behaves enthusiastically with McKenzie, he has been very passive aggressive in his interactions with DiBello and the project team, and he has repeatedly been non-responsive to requests for necessary information.

Thinking about the Tuckman model of group development, DiBello noted that the team members seemed stuck in the "storming" phase, unable to fully develop the internal trust and cooperative teamwork typical of the "norming" phase. He wondered where the process of team building had gone off track and what he could do to salvage the cooperative environment that existed early in the project.

The content development process again hit a snag when a group of SME's for Phase 3 projects were unexpectedly unavailable at the critical time. When DiBello reached out to find out why they weren't available to work on project tasks, he found out that they had been pulled into developing a competitive bid for a back office processing contract with a global securities firm. DiBello went to Clint Stanley, the head of Product Management, to try to resolve the conflict. Stanley was apologetic but said he hadn't been made aware of when and for how long those particular SMEs were required for the portal project. Stanley said that he needed the SMEs for the important bid for the next two weeks, but that he would try to make sure they were available after that.

On the IT side, DiBello had another resource problem. Despite creating responsibility assignment matrices for all of the expected IT-related tasks, Steve Quan complained to his manager that he was spending pretty much all of his time on the project and neglecting his other responsibilities as a result. He felt that his colleagues were not being held accountable for any of the HighLEARN tasks even though they had more time on their hands. He also said that he had a vacation planned in June and would not be able to put this much energy into the testing and QC that was scheduled to take place then.

As the team entered the summer months, DiBello's project plan indicated that content, site development and IT environment tasks were scheduled to wrap up. The time prior to launch was allocated largely to uploading and formatting content, user testing, site QC, and resolving bugs and issues in the system. Some content was still delayed, however, and not all project stakeholders were happy about the portal's progress. Partly as a result of a growing rivalry with McKenzie, Allard had become increasingly vocal about what she believed to be a waste of resources on a site that, in her view, no one was going to ever use. She urged Hightower's executive leadership to cut its losses and purchase an out-of-the box solution such as SharePoint. She had succeeded in influencing Contin to share her point of view and told him not to spend much time on the project since she believed it was going to fail anyway. McKenzie was getting furious with Allard's efforts to sabotage HighLEARN, and he complained to Bailey, the CEO, that she was putting its success in peril by not being a team player.

The three Sales Division leaders, on the other hand, were all enthusiastic to see the initial version of QSO 640: Project Management

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the site. When DiBello shared the first product pages with them, they were eager to ask questions and give feedback. Jose Colon, Head of Bank & Brokerage sales, which typically sells the most complex products over long sales cycles, felt there needed to be more access to webinars and more information to handle different client stakeholders. Cathy Rich, Head of Mutual Fund and Insurance, also liked the idea of webinars, particularly for newly acquired products, but wanted to add streaming videos with each SME or product specialist. Bob McDermott had different priorities ‐ he wanted to use the portal to give recognition to high performing sales associates in the Corporate Institutions group and hoped that the Content Specialists would write more case studies to showcase successful sales efforts. With limited time and budget remaining to add content to the existing product pages, DiBello wasn't sure how to prioritize these different requests or whether to reply that they would be added in a follow up release after the launch.

Before you move on to the next section of the case study, identify the problems and/or issues that you'll need to include in your analysis. Document this information, and consider how you will integrate it into your evaluation of the project.

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Registered Education Provider logo are registered marks of the Project Management Institute, Inc.