Pointp Millennium Valve Project - Case Study Example

Pointp Millennium Valve Project Name: University: Date: Table of Contents Phase One: Initiation 9 2.Develop the detailed work breakdown structure and responsibility matrix 10 Pointp Millennium Valve Project 1.0 Introduction Without a doubt, as evidenced in Millennium Valve Project, a project is a multifaceted, one-time, non-routine effort restrained by budget, time, resources and design of performance specifications so as to meet the needs of the customers. Basically, project management is a cluster of knowledge, techniques, and tools that, when utilised, assists in achieving three key controls of time, cost, and scope. This case analysis focuses on Millennium Valve Project, whose project sponsor was Pointp Products. Pointp produces valves that are attached to industrial tanks to control water levels, especially in construction industry. However its desire to move into the replacement market by introducing Millennium Valve due to a number of factors such as poor planning, poor cost estimation, lack of patience among others, and will be discussed in details in the report. Specifically, the report seeks to to identify the factors that contributed to Pointp’s Millennium Valve Project failure to achieve the Valve they desired and provides recommendations how this project should have been carried out from the onset. 2.0 Discussions of the Major Issues / Problems Factors that could have led to failure of Millennium Valve Project includes; poor planning, poor cost estimation; poor leadership; and lack of patience. As a major project, Millennium Valve Project turned out to be more and more multifaceted. The problems of determining the nature of project success for various stakeholders is crucially important if things like delays as well as conflicts of interest are reduced (Nicholas & Steyn, 2012; Rae & Eden, 2002). Pointp had sent Request for Proposal (RFP) to four companies, but disregarded others and selected Indubest Inc., simply because it offered the lowest bid as compared to the other three; in this case it desired to achieve more with less money. Indubest was not competent enough to handle this project, because it did not have prior knowledge of this type of project. According to Attarzadeh and Ow (2008), projects fail mostly due to inability to estimate and plan appropriately, or failure in tasks implementation in line with the plan or failure attributed to human factor, and this is the case in Millennium Valve Project. Based on estimation and planning factor, Attarzadeh and Ow (2008) posit that this factor connotes the initial schedule and cost estimates are exceedingly changed or remain constant when information about the project progress becomes available. 2.1 Poor Planning and Lack of Patience In Millennium Valve Project, Indubest proposal was reviewed by Joe Blog, and later divided the project into small work packages as well as stages and also a Gantt chart was prepared. Blog review results indicated that Indubest‘s proposal had gone astray, since a number of important steps and processes were missing, in addition to the fact that the cost of the project was considerably underestimated. This resulted in the writing of the proposal together with the cost estimate and schedule, and this reoccurred numerous times. Furthermore, there were frustrations from both sides, especially by engineers at Indubest who were exasperated at the continuous harping by Pointp for functional superiority, but at low cost. Although this was achievable, Pointp management desired for a swift, development effort at a low-cost. Lack of resources materialised during the project, when Indubest engineers discerned that designing the Millennium valve needed more resources than what had been budgeted. Due to such changes, the budgeted amount was exceeded and Pointp had to offer more money. In spite high budget, Indubest delivered a vague prototype, prompting Pointp to use more money and time in the attempt to make the prototype meet its expectation. Ultimately, the models presented by Indubest exhibited that the final product could be produced but it would turn out to be expensive in the market giving the competitors more advantage, resulting in wastage of both time and money. Pointp used twice the money it had budgeted for, and due to costs it was impossible that the product, after development could be priced low adequately to compete in a market that was already competitive. 2.2 Poor Cost Estimation In Millennium Valve Project, plans were not correctly used since they failed to guide the project forward resulting in failure. Besides that, the failure was also attributed to implementation factor, which was caused by changes in project scope, inappropriate utilisation of project methodology, key changes in the testing as well as requirements. Also, a human factor played a crucial part in failure of this project, since Indubest personnel lacked knowledge about this project and also Pointp lacked the needed management skills. This can be evidenced by the fact that the managers of the Millennium Valve Project were unsuccessful in applying and putting project management theory into practice. Besides that, poor communications also contributes to factors that result in the project failure. As mentioned by Rad (2001), cost and time estimating skills are regularly reliant on experience, and so less experienced estimators are inclined to be excessively hopeful and presume that everything in the project will be successful. Experienced estimators, on the other hand, always make correct estimates because they are inclined to presume everything will go wrong. However, in the process of planning, Simms (2007) posits that estimation may turn out to be cumulative leading to poor overall estimates. Given that project costs are driven by estimates, this may needlessly raise the project cost, as evidenced in the Millennium case. Poor estimating both in cost and time is at times invigorated by the culture of the project and also the organisational culture. In this case, senior management opportunely overlooks the connotation of the term ‘estimates’ and presumes they have to be precise, and this is exhibited by Pointp management who ask for accuracy rashly. Undoubtedly, accurate cost estimating in any engineering project is exceedingly crucial, and so, underestimated costs can persuade the company’s management to create new systems that afterwards exhaust their budgets and results in failure to realise their anticipated payoff. Overestimated costs can persuade the project management not to create a product that is potentially valuable (Nicholas & Steyn, 2012). 3.0 Discussions of the Relevant Theories  Some of relevant theories that materialise in this case study includes; leadership theory, management theory, conceptual skills, and change management. 3.1 Leadership According to Taylor (2002), it is unbelievable that a company can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in a project and afterwards become unsuccessful in leading that project to success. However, most project failures are attributed to poor leadership. In a project, the leader is expected to offer the future vision and instigate a shared vision with every person impacted by the project (Robbins, Bergman, Stagg, & Coulter, 2014). Essentially, this is difficult, but as mentioned by Nixon, Harrington, and Parker (2012), it is crucial to the project success. If the leaders fail to share a vision, then the project is doomed to fail. Leadership as stated by Nixon, Harrington, and Parker (2012) is an important factor in the entire process of the project, and so, effective leadership will result in project success, but this was not the case for Millennium Valve Project. It is evident that poor project leadership resulted in the failure of the project, and project leader who was in command of the Millennium Valve Project failed to set direction. Basically, scores of project leaders are chosen due to their education background instead of their know-hows, with the anticipation that the project leader will steer the project to success. In Millennium case, poor leadership of the project can be highlighted as the main factor behind the failure of the project. Lack of leadership skill makes the project members become demotivated and ultimately decrease their performance, and since the leader of the project lacks the clear market trend vision like credit crunch, the project will end up costing more and be delivered late. 3.2 Management and Conceptual Skills As mentioned by Iqbal (2014), with no vision, then the project lacks parameters as well as purpose, and the outcome is expectations that are misaligned between those in the project and those relying on the project’s results. Moreover, with no vision as well as the ensuing scope definition, expectations will by no means be clearly aligned, and as a result, the project goals may be less achieved (Robbins, Bergman, Stagg, & Coulter, 2014). Without continuous project support from both senior-management and middle-management such as full-time devotion to the project, development of the project’s successes into plans of organisational incentive, then the project will end up failing. According to Karlsen, Gottschalk, and Andersen (2002), project management job is demanding and complicated, since managers have to carry out numerous forms of activities so as to realise the project’s objective. Mintzberg’s concept of management roles can be utilised to clearly understand the project manager pattern of activities. Mintzber posited that the manager’s job entails numerous roles all together. Mostly, managers see one role as more imperative as compared to the others. Mintzberg established that management literature curiosity focuses on a certain part of the job of the manager to the marginalisation of the other roles (Karlsen, Gottschalk, & Andersen, 2002). In project management context, Karlsen, Gottschalk, and Andersen (2002) recognised the significance of six roles from the role typology presented by Mintzberg: resource allocator, spokesman, leader, liaison, monitor, as well as entrepreneur. Pointp management lacked conceptual skills, which is the ability talent to utilize information so as to solve troubles within the company, to identify improvement opportunities, to identify and implement solutions, to choose important information from loads of statistics, and to comprehend the business expertise users and business model of the organization. 3.3 Change Management The sponsors of the project should be experienced change agents who have a clear knowledge of the valves business. In this case, Pointp lacked subject-matter experts in this area considering that just having a person with outstanding skills of project management is not sufficient since they can break down because of insufficient comprehensive knowledge of the subject area. Pointp failed to understand that expertise as well brings the respect as well as credibility required so as to be successful in their project. The company needed change agents who clearly comprehend how valves business works, and also have some financial knowledge. Besides the appropriate expertise, change agents must be well-connected across the company, and both Pointp and Indubest failed to consider that active relationships in every organization’s area are crucial in successfully completing a project. Basically, project leaders experience tremendous pressure, but as change agents they must be in a position to effectively and efficiently operate during times of uncertainty as well as instability. For successful projects, managers should be able to manage various constituencies, conflicting priorities, as well as fast-approaching deadlines. In this case, they are responsible for leading the company through a number of challenging changes. This can be achieved if project leaders and managers can be able to remain highly efficient while under intense pressure. Conclusion In conclusion, it has been argued that Millennium project failure was caused by numerous factors, but poor estimation and lack of leadership has been cited as a key contributor. Still, the contributor or cause of the project failure notion for Millennium project was characteristically the system of project management, unproductive organisational practices, or procedures. Basically, there are numerous techniques for project scheduling and planning for managing and helping to ensure success of the project. A number of such techniques, still, are less suitable for certain projects types and hence, may result in project failure. Recommendations For Millennium Valve Project to be successful, it should have followed for vital phases: Phase One: Initiation In this stage, Pointp should develop a high risk assessment and level plan for the proposed Millennium Valve Project and offer adequate portfolio data for the project’s strategic viability assessment. They should have not offered contract to Indubest, rather they should have done the project themselves so as to meet strategic requirements of the project and the immediate necessities. In this case the steps involved should have included: 1. Internal research 2. Development of requirements and solutions 3. Review of past lessons learned from failed projects 4. Define the roles of the project, 5. Assemble a core team for the project 6. Develop a high-level Work Breakdown Structure 7. Develop cost estimates 8. Perform high-level risk assessment 9. Create a project charter. Phase Two: Project Planning In this phase, the Millennium Valve Project should have started and is useful in establishing a precise schedule and plan for the project. During this phase, Pointp should have assigned responsibilities; develop and present reporting and communications expectations to the project team; and establish tracking systems. So the steps involved in this phase should have included: 1. Preforming detailed planning for the project team through work session and meeting 2. Develop the detailed work breakdown structure and responsibility matrix 3. Develop plan for communications 4. Management planning as well as Risk assessment 5. Define HR skill requirements 6. Schedule preparation and develop plan for cost management 7. Manage quality and develop baselines Phase Three: Project Execution and Control Success of projects depends on tracking and control of the project, and in this case, the project manager should have monitored the project team continuously, to make certain no team member drowns. In this phase, executing, controlling, and monitoring the progress of project is exceedingly crucial so as to detect any arising problem or issue early enough in order to hastily get the project back on plan to meet the set objectives. Pointp should have track the project progress by recording estimates and actuals, concentrated on quality rather that quick completion of the project, and also should have created an environment wherein project members felt safe reporting accurately on the status of the project. In this phase the steps should have included: 1. Tracking and Status Meeting 2. Change management and quality maintenance 3. Project documentation and facilitation of executive review meeting 4. Monitoring and controlling Project Risk 5. Adjusting schedules and carrying out Interim project review Final Phase: Project Close-Out During this phase, every activity related to the project should be completed and every deliverable be completed. Furthermore the project should be reviewed and testing performed to make certain all requirements have been included. The steps should have included: 1. Administrative closure 2. Survey the participants of the project 3. Perform post implementation review 4. Develop lessons learned If the above mentioned phases and steps could have keenly been followed, then without a doubt the Millennium Valve Project could have been a success story for Pointp. References Attarzadeh, m., & Ow, S. H. (2008). Project Management Practices: The Criteria for Succ ess or Failure. Communications of the IBIMA, 1, 234-241. Iqbal, S. M. (2014). Leadership Competency: A Tool for Project Success. Middle East Journal of Scientific Research, 19(10), 1280-1283. Karlsen, J. T., Gottschalk, P., & Andersen, E. S. (2002). Information Technology Management Roles: A Comparison of IT Executives and IT Project Managers. Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, (pp. 1-8). Honolulu, Hawaii. Nicholas, J. M., & Steyn, H. (2012). Project Management for Engineering, Business, and Technology (4th ed.). Abingdon, Oxon: Elsevier. Nixon, P., Harrington, M., & Parker, D. (2012). Leadership performance is significant to project success or failure: a critical analysis. International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, 61(2), 204 - 216. Rad, P. F. (2001). cost and time estimating skills are regularly reliant on experience. London: Do Sustainability. Rae, T., & Eden, C. (2002). On Project Success and Failure in Major Engineering Projects. Glasgow: University of Strathclyde. Robbins, S. P., Bergman, R., Stagg, I., & Coulter, M. (2014). Management (7th ed.). Sydney: Pearson Australia. Simms, J. (2007, August 7). Why Projects Fail: Part 8, Poor Estimating. Retrieved from CIO: http://www.cio.com.au/article/190288/why_projects_fail_part_8_poor_estimating/ Taylor, M. A. (2002). The 5 Reasons Why Most Projects Fail. Plymouth: TAYLOR Systems Engineering Corporation. Read More