Reference no: EM132228535
Great App Co. was started two years ago by two friends, Amber King and Jason Adams, who met in college while taking a mobile app development class. Their new business focused on helping firms identify opportunities for mobile apps that could add value and improve profits. Their first big contract was with Academic eBooks, Inc. to develop an app that would allow easy access to textbooks for college students. The contract kept the two busy and profitable. Word of their success spread and they were approached by large University who wanted them to create customized eTextbooks that could be accessed via mobile apps.
Amber and Jason knew that the contract with the University would mean that they would have to expand their business and they hired several employees to help them. In spite of the additional staff, Great App Co. started experiencing critical problems. The found that that they were not able to leverage all of their new employees effectively and as a result they were unable to deliver the mobile app services to their customers on schedule, and they were unable to provide the customized textbooks that met the business requirements provided by the University; as a result, the quality of their products was beginning to suffer. A lot of time and money was being spent fixing defects in their products and they were finding they were unable to control costs; for the first time since they started their company, they were not profitable. Great App Co. saw a significant rise in issues, a lot of unpleasant “surprises” were cropping up; business was suffering just as new resources had been hired. They were also finding that their projects were poorly estimated.
The University was unhappy as their mobile apps, and associated access to the customized etextbooks, reached campus late for use by both professors and students. In some cases, books were up to three weeks late. This was a major problem as the customized ebooks were reaching campus late for use by professors, making it difficult to prepare classes on time. In some cases, the books were not received until weeks after the semester had started. Since the classes begin on a schedule and students need their books at the start of a class, their new lucrative University customer was unhappy. To make matters even worse, their earlier customers were also unhappy as the problems with the University contract were taking up more and more of Great App Co.’s resources and time.
One of the new employees that Amber and Jason had hired, Sophie, had taken a project management class in college. Sophie was excited about the discipline of project management and had intentionally selected a job with Great App Co.’s as she saw an opportunity to polish her project management skills.
One day, Amber and Jason met with Sophie. They were aware that Samantha was familiar with project management and they wanted to hear what she had to say about the problems that the company was facing. They discussed the business and they asked Sophie for her perspective about why the company that had operated and implemented projects so successfully over the first two years was being challenged significantly now. They specifically listed problems that they were facing and asked for Sophie’s input to solve them. Excited about the opportunity, Sophie asked for more time to research all of the issues but noted that Great App Co., while being innovative, completed projects without a roadmap or project plan and lacked a disciplined approach to project management. She noted that the company 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, Amber and Jason asked Sophie if she would be interested in moving to a new position, project manager, introduce project management practices and help them tide over their current crisis. Sophie was thrilled about the opportunity to become a project manager and to define the project management activities for this organization. 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 project manager, she introduced formal project management processes, created a project management manual and trained the employees to get the work done well. Within nine months Sophie had fully turned things around. Due to proactive risk analysis and risk response planning, surprises and issues reduced. Communication with stakeholders was enhanced. Amber and Jason noted that the company was delivering projects on schedule, the quality processes worked—and customers were happy with the products
Provide answers for the following:
Why do you think that Great App Co Struggled?
What were the specific PM solutions that were introduced by Sophie (described in the scenario above) that worked?
If you had been hired as the project manager at Great App Co., describe the process that you would take to determine a plan for this “project” of introducing project management policies and procedures to this company. What questions would you ask, who would you want to talk to, what type of information would you gather? What would be your “project plan” for introducing project management to Great App Co?
Great App Co is a technology intensive business, but Sophie does not have technical experience, what describe how her lack of technical experience might impact her ability to be successful in her new job and what will she need to do to deal with the lack of technical experience in order to be a successful project manager in this context?