Jack and Alien’s new gaming laptop.
Jack Daniel is an expert in digital signal processing and waspromoted to Senior Design Engineer just two years after Alien whosecompany motto is “For gamers by gamers”. After serving as a SeniorDesign Engineer for two years, he was promoted to Project Managerand asked to oversee a product development project involving arelatively minor product line extension one of Alien’s gamingkeyboards.
Alien had a range of existing gaming laptops and gamingperipherals that are distributed through a network of value-addedresellers. After completing the gaming keyboard product lineextension project about nine months ago, Jack was asked to serve asthe project manager for a project to develop a new line of”Superlite” gaming laptops. This was the first time he was to leada major strategic project for the organization so Jack wasted notime in planning the project. Based on the success of the productline extension project, he decided to modify the work breakdownstructure he had developed for the product line extension projectand apply it to this new project to develop a new line of notebookcomputers. He recalled the weeks of planning that went intodeveloping the work breakdown structure for the desktop productline extension project. The entire project team had been involved,and that was a relatively straightforward product line extension.The current project was more complicated, and there simply was notsufficient time to involve all team members. What was the point ofwasting valuable time and resources to re-invent the wheel? Jackthought between his experience and the suggestions made by theVice-President he has more than enough information to plan theproject.
After modifying the work breakdown structure, Jack scheduled ameeting with the Vice-President of Product Development to discussstaffing the project. As was typical of other product developmentprojects at Alien, Jack and the Vice-President agreed that theproject should be housed within the engineering division. In hiscapacity as project manager, Jack would serve as liaison to otherfunctional areas such as marketing, purchasing, finance, andproduction. However thought since they had finished the desktopproduct line extension project they should have plenty of sparecapacity for the new line of notebook computers. Jack was concernedthat half the engineers had already been assigned to other projectsbut thought that if everything worked out well it should stillwork.
As the project progressed, it continued to slip behind schedule.Jack found it necessary to schedule a meeting each week to addresshow unanticipated activities would be completed. For example, lastweek the team realized that no one had been assigned to design alight system to allow the screen to attach and detach the base sothat it could be used as a touch screen.
Indeed, Jack found himself increasingly in crisis mode. Forexample, this morning the manufacturing group sent a heated emailto Jack complaining about his conflict management style which wasdescribed as aggressive. The manufacturing group noted that theyjust learned of the notebook computer project and based on thedesign presented to them, they would not be able to manufacture theprinted circuit boards because of the extensive amount of surfacemount components required. Jack responded to this message by notingthat the engineering group was doing its job and had designed astate-of-the-art notebook computer. He added that it was themanufacturing group's problem to decide how to produce it. Hethought some people just do not have a "can do" attitude wanted tospend too much time talking about problems.
Just as troubling was the crisis that had occurred earlier inthe week. The Vice-President of Product Development had requestedthat the notebook computer incorporate a new type of interfacethat would allow the notebook computer to synchronise informationwith the new portable playing platform Alien was about tointroduce. Jack explained that incorporating new interfaces forhigh speed synchronise of large would delay the introduction by aminimum of several months. Nevertheless, the Vice-President wasadamant that the change be made. The Vice-President of ProductDevelopment said to Jack it was pretty obvious from Alien'sPresident's speech last week that all Aliens products wouldinterface with each other and expressed concern that Jack seems tobe losing his "can do" attitude and wanting to spend too much timetalking about problems. The Vice-President of Product Developmentthought it was time to get a new project manager. He felt Jack didnot know how to play the game and was disappointed that Jack hadmessed up such a simple project.
Questions:
Q1. Does Jack Daniel showthe competencies' of a good project manager? Describe thecharacteristics of a good project manager and compare Jack to thesecharacteristics using frameworks discussed in the course.
Q2. “Jack’s great strengthis his ability to manage teams.” Do you agree or disagree? Userelevant concepts from the course and specific examples from thecase to justify your answer.
Q3 How couldthe problems facing Jack been avoided or lessened if good projectmanagement practices and auditing processes had been used. Identifyfour problems and how these could have been addressed usingspecific concepts and frameworks covered in the course. Clearlydefine the problem and provide specific examples of how specificconcepts and frameworks covered in the course these could have beenused to lessen the risk or impact of this problem.
