Reference no: EM133673291

Review the Case Study below as a Group and write an essay using the questions at the end as a prompt to help guide your thinking. Use resources not only from the Case Study but also from other sources such as the text book(s), lectures and reference materials.

Zane Corporation
BACKGROUND
Zane Corporation was a medium-sized company with multiple product lines. More than 20 years ago, Zane implemented project management to be used in all their product lines, but mainly for operational or traditional projects rather than strategic or innovation projects. Recognizing that a methodology would be needed, Zane made the faulty conclusion that a single methodology would be needed and that a one-size-fits-all mentality would satisfy almost all their projects. Senior management believed that this would standardize status reporting and make it easy for senior management to recognize the true performance. This approach worked well in many other companies that Zane knew about, but it was applied to primarily traditional or operational projects.

As the one-size-fits-all approach became common practice, Zane began capturing lessons learned and best practices with the intent of improving the singular methodology. Project management was still being viewed as an approach for projects that were reasonably well defined, having risks that could be easily managed, and executed by a rather rigid methodology that had limited flexibility. Executives believed that project management standardization was a necessity for effective corporate governance.

THE PROJECT MANAGEMENT LANDSCAPE CHANGES
Zane recognized the benefits of using project management from their own successes, the capturing of lessons learned and best practices, and published research data. Furthermore, Zane was now convinced that almost all activities within the firm could be regarded as projects and they were therefore managing their business by projects.

As the one-size-fits-all methodology began to be applied to nontraditional or strategic projects, the weaknesses in the singular methodology became apparent. Strategic projects, especially those that involved innovation, were not always completely definable at project initiation, the scope of work could change frequently during project execution, governance now appeared in the form of committee governance with significantly more involvement by the customer or business owner, and a different form of project leadership was required on some projects. Recognizing the true status of some of the nontraditional projects was becoming difficult.

The traditional risk management approach used on operational projects appeared to be insufficient for strategic projects. As an example, strategic projects require a risk management approach that emphasizes VUCA analyses:

Volatility
Uncertainty
Complexity
Ambiguity
Significantly more risks were appearing on strategic projects where the requirements could change rapidly to satisfy turbulent business needs. This became quite apparent on IT projects that focused heavily upon the traditional waterfall methodology that offered little flexibility. The introduction of an agile methodology solved some of the IT problems but created others. Agile was a flexible methodology or framework that focused heavily upon better risk management activities but required a great deal of collaboration. Every methodology or framework comes with advantages and disadvantages.

The introduction of an agile methodology gave Zane a choice between a rigid one-size-fits-all approach or a very flexible agile framework. Unfortunately, not all projects were perfect fits for an extremely rigid or flexible approach. Some were middle-of-the-road projects that fell in between rigid waterfall approaches and flexible agile frameworks.

UNDERSTANDING METHODOLOGIES
Zane's original belief was that a methodology functioned as a set of principles that a company can tailor and then apply to a specific situation or group of activities that have some degree of commonality. In a project environment, these principles might appear as a list of things to do and show up as forms, guidelines, templates, and checklists. The principles may be structured to correspond to specific project life-cycle phases.

For most companies, including Zane, the project management methodology, often referred to as the waterfall approach where everything is done sequentially, became the primary tool for the "command and control" of projects, providing some degree of standardization in the execution of the work and control over the decision-making process. Standardization and control came at a price and provided some degree of limitation as to when the methodology could be used effectively. Typical limitations that Zane discovered included:

Type of Project: Most methodologies assumed that the requirements of the project were reasonably well defined at the onset of the project. Tradeoffs were primarily on time and cost rather than scope. This limited the use of the methodology to traditional or operational projects that were reasonably well understood at the project approval stage and had a limited number of unknowns. Strategic projects, such as those involving innovation that had to be aligned to strategic business objective rather than a clear statement of work, could not be easily managed using the waterfall methodology because of the large number of unknowns and the fact that they could change frequently.
Performance Tracking: With reasonable knowledge about the project's requirements, performance tracking was accomplished mainly using the triple constraints of time, cost, and scope. Nontraditional or strategic projects had significantly more constraints that required monitoring and therefore used other tracking systems than the project management methodology. Simply stated, the traditional methodology had limited flexibility when applied to projects that were not operational.
Risk Management: Risk management was important on all types of projects. But on nontraditional or strategic projects, with the high number of unknowns that can change frequently over the life of the project, standard risk management practices that are included in traditional methodologies may be insufficient for risk assessment and mitigation practices.
Governance: For traditional projects, governance was provided by a single person acting as the sponsor for the project. The methodology became the sponsor's primary vehicle for command and control and used with the mistaken belief that all decisions could be made by monitoring just the time, cost, and scope constraints.
SELECTING THE RIGHT FRAMEWORK
Zane recognized that the future was not simply a decision between waterfall, agile, and Scrum as to which one will be a best fit for a given project. New frameworks, perhaps a hybrid methodology, needed to be created from the best features of each approach and then applied to a project. Zane now believed with a reasonable degree of confidence that new frameworks, with a great deal of flexibility and the ability to be customized, will certainly appear in the future and would be a necessity for continued growth. Deciding which framework is best suited to a given project will be the challenge and project teams will be given the choice of which one to use.

Zane believed that project teams of the future will begin each project by determining which approach will best suit their needs. This would be accomplished with checklists and questions that address characteristics of the project, such as flexibility of the requirements, flexibility in the constraints, type of leadership needed, team skill levels needed, and the culture of the organization. The answers to the questions would then be pieced together to form a framework that may be unique to a given project.

QUESTIONS

1) What are some of the questions that Zane should ask themselves when selecting a flexible methodology?
2) What issues could arise that would need resolution?