Mini-Case Study: Project Management at Global Green Books Publishing Global Gree
ID: 421867 • Letter: M
Question
Mini-Case Study: Project Management at Global Green Books Publishing
Global Green Books Publishing was started two years ago by two friends, Mulenga Phiri and Bwalya Nyoni, who met in college while studying in Lusaka, Zambia. In the new business Mulenga focused on editing, sales and marketing while Bwalya Nyoni did the electronic assembly and publishing of books for Global Green Books. Their business was successful and profitable in the first two years, largely due to contracts from two big businesses.
In their third year they got very busy thanks to their third major customer, a local college that needed customized eBooks. They hired several part time employees to help them with their publishing business.
But by the end of third year of operation, Global Green Books started experiencing critical problems. They were:
unable to leverage all the new employees effectively
unable to deliver eBooks to their customers on schedule
unable to provide quality texts—time and money was being spent fixing defects in their products
unable to control costs—their business was not profitable in the third year.
Global Green Books saw a significant rise in issues, a lot of unpleasant “surprises” were cropping up; business was down as new resources were hired, also some of the projects were poorly estimated. The local university was unhappy as their eBook products reached campus late for use by professors and student. In some cases, the books were a week or two late. Since the courses must start on schedule and students need their books at the beginning of their courses, the new lucrative college customer was unhappy.
One of the new part-time employees hired by Mulenga and Bwalya, Samantha, had taken a project management course at college. Samantha was excited about the discipline of project management and had intentionally selected a job with Global Green Books Publishing as she saw an opportunity to polish her project management skills.
One fine day, Mulenga invited Samantha, for a lunch meeting. He was aware that Samantha was familiar with project management, and wanted to hear what she had to say about the problems he and Bwalya were facing. Over lunch he questioned why their small business which had operated and implemented projects so successfully over the first two years was being challenged significantly now. He specifically listed the problems they were facing and asked for input to solve them.
Samantha asked for more time to research all the issues but noted that Global Green Books, while being innovative, completed projects without a roadmap or a project plan and lacked a disciplined approach to project management. She noted that Mulenga and Bwalya did not use any project software for scheduling and they did not use tools or techniques to estimate, budget or to communicate with stakeholders. Finally, they had no processes in place to manage project risks and quality.
Impressed with this and other conversations, Mulenga Phiri asked Samantha if she would consider joining them as a project associate or project manager on a full-time basis to help them introduce project management practices and help them tide over their current crisis.
Samantha accepted the offer! She has several key skills—she is an excellent communicator with very good interpersonal skills and detail-oriented. Within the first three months in her new role as PM, she introduced formal project management processes, created a PM manual and trained the employees to get the work done well.
Within nine months Samantha had fully turned things around. Due to proactive risk analysis and risk response planning, surprises and issues reduced. Communication with stakeholders was enhanced. Bwalya and Mulenga noted that the company was delivering projects on schedule, the quality processes worked—and customers were happy with the products!
Comment on the following aspects of the case study:
What were the specific PM solutions that were introduced by Samantha that worked?
MARKS]
What kind of suggestions would you give to Bwalya and Mulenga if you were the PM?
MARKS]
Explanation / Answer
What were the specific PM solutions that were introduced by Samantha that worked
Samantha has introduced the solutions like at first, she trained and motivated the employees with her inter personal skills, she must have communicated her project plan very well so that employees could have understood what they are supposed to do. She has introduced Risk assessment tool so that one can identify the risk associated with the given project and corrective actions can be taken beforehand. Later she set the schedules through various software’s available these days and accordingly communication among the internal staff improved which helps in timely production and maintenance of quality standard recheck were arranged.
What kind of suggestions would you give to Bwalya and Mulenga if you were the PM?
If I happen to be a PM in her place, I would have added first an analysis of what are intended goals, who are supposed to perform such goals and who will be ultimately responsible for the quality of the Outcome. I would have investigated supply chain management wherein the flaws exist. Through SWOT analysis, all weakness and threats would have been analysis. Accordingly, of course, risk management process is crucial for any business or project. There must be a self-managed team and each member would have allotted the specific task to perform which will bring more transparency and everyone would be knowing what he must perform and accordingly accountability would be there which will make each employee to perform well.