In the first article – Case Study 1 – I discussed my experience working with a startup delivering a web-based service to three new major clients. Case Study 2 goes outside the IT world to a leading supplier of mechanical automation and control equipment.
The first study focused on my client’s inability to deliver because they were lacking the overall processes and structure to ‘professionally’ manage their large implementations. This second study focuses on the resource management issues my client was facing as they were attempting to deliver on current projects and ramp up for future projects.
To the Rescue – Case Study 2
This organization was very successful. They had become one of the leading suppliers of mechanical automation and control equipment to big name companies in theatre, Hollywood, theme parks, and large-scale Las Vegas entertainment productions.
Entrepreneurial aggressiveness wasn’t the issue, but it was indirectly the cause. Their team of non-technical PMs were leading large scale implementations locally and internationally utilizing this organization’s small pool of personnel and equipment resources to deliver on the existing projects. These engagements were being tracked in the worst way possible for a busy, overloaded, growing firm whose reputation rested solely on how they performed on their last big project. Nothing was standardized, much of it was on paper and some of it was in spreadsheets.
The Basic Problem
This company was growing and doing a lot of business. They were – and still are – being acknowledged in the leading trade magazines and conferences and had no problem attracting customers. And they were led by a very creative CEO, who was constantly out selling their business to new customers and winning new engagements.
That sounds great, but what that caused – given their lack of overall project oversight – was a significant resource management problem They never knew from one minute to the next if they had enough resources – people or equipment - in place and available to cover both their current projects and their future work that the CEO was out selling.
Standardizing the Tracking
First, I met with the General Manager to get a good understanding of their resources and their business processes. As I said, this was not an IT shop so it was somewhat new to me. I then met individually with all of the project managers, reviewed their current projects and any documentation they had on the current status and issues, and went off to create an overall project template that would fit most of what they do on a given project. I then worked with the PMs and the General Manager to get all of their current projects setup in a project management software solution.
The Fix
To implement project tracking and an overall project template, I utilized MS Project. Ultimately, they needed more of a collaboration tool. Since the learning curve and overall cost is fairly significant (and the implementation painful) for the Project Professional 2007 + Project Server 2007 collaboration tool solution, I would recommend going with Seavus’ ProjectOffice.net web-based collaboration solution. That is what I am guiding them toward currently. However, at the time we needed to work with what we had and that was MS Project.
Together with the GM and the various PMs, we setup all of their current projects in MS Project based on the general project plan template I had developed. In order to manage their personnel and equipment resources across all projects – which is the overall solution they were seeking – I created a shared resource pool that all project plans utilized. It worked well and provides them with the resource allocation reporting they so badly needed, though the future implementation of a collaboration tool like ProjectOffice.net will give them a better view of all projects and resources at any given time and allow for true collaboration within the organization.
Summary
Even in the non-IT world, an IT Project Manager can make a difference and help an organization like this get a handle on their resources and how to move forward effectively without alienating their customer base. A major concern in this case study was that as the business grew without the proper resource oversight, eventually they would start missing dates and deadlines on critical deliverables due to overextended resources. It was already starting to happen on a very limited basis which is why they contacted me. This problem, left unchecked, would have led to unhappy customers, a decrease in their customer base, and a decrease in revenue and profits.