Reference no: EM132212892
Case : The Hokies Lunch Group 1
The Peruvian cilantro/lime ceviche was a big hit at the next lunch. Viktoria began their discussion by reporting, “I have good and bad news. The bad news is that our first prototype failed its tests miserably. The good news is that I have a smart project manager. She knew this could happen, so she mitigated the risk by having us working on two alternative battery technologies. The alternative technology is passing all of the tests. Instead of falling behind months we are only days behind schedule.”
This precipitated a discussion of risk management. Fatma reported that there had been a two-day session on risk management for the renovation project. They spent the first day brainstorming what could go wrong, and the second day coming up with strategies for dealing with risks. A big help was the risk report that was generated after the last project. The report detailed all of the problems that had occurred on the last renovation project as well as recommendations. Fatma said, “I couldn’t believe how much time and attention was devoted to safety, but as my project manager said, ‘all it takes is one bad accident to shut down a project for weeks, even months.”
Jasper reported that on his project they spent very little time on risk management. His project was driven by a build-test mentality. “Everybody assumes that daily testing eliminates problems, but when it’s time to integrate different features, that’s when the real bugs will emerge,” Jasper said.
Jasper went on to say that things were not going well at work. They had missed their second straight milestone, and everyone was feeling the pressure to show results. “I even slept by my cubicle three nights ago,” Jasper confessed. Fatma asked, “How many hours are you working?” “I don’t know, at least 70, maybe 80 hours,” Jasper answered. He went on to say, “This is a high stakes project, with a BIG upside if successful. I am doing some of my best programming and we’ll just have to see what happens.”
Jasper showed them a cartoon that was being circulated across his team. The caption read: “When did you want it done? Yesterday.”
Fatma turned to her friends and said, “I need some advice. As you know I’m responsible for scheduling work assignments. Well, some of my colleagues have been pretty aggressive lobbying for choice assignments. Everyone wants to work alongside Bruno or Ryan. Suddenly I am everyone’s friends, and certain people are going way out of their way to do favors for me. I am sure they think it will influence my decisions. It’s getting awkward and I am not sure what to do.”
“Quid pro quo,” answered Jasper, “that’s how the business world works. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. Within reason, I don’t have a problem with someone taking advantage of their position to garner favors and build relationships.”
Viktoria said, “I disagree. You don’t want to be seen as someone whose influence can be bought. You need to think what’s best for the company. You need to ask yourself what would Bruno and Ryan want you to do? And if you don’t know, ask them.”
After much discussion, Fatma left the restaurant leaning towards Viktoria’s advice, but she wasn’t sure what the guidelines should be.
Questions:
1. What phase of the project life cycle is project in? Explain with diagram.
2. What are two important things you learned about working on projects from the case? Why are they important?