Case Studies

Project Management in Practice

These case studies show the use of project management in practice. Studying real-life situations will help you see how others have been successful.

Too Tired to Care? Regain Your Perspective With 5 Proven Practices

Kimberly Wieflings story of her journey from 'too tried to care' to a better balance in life by adopting five common sense practices that have helped her regain her perspective, reduce stress, and optimise the results she gets from time invested in her work. Make some changes for the better before youre carried out on a stretcher!

Who is the Project Manager?

A project managers prime task is managing a project to success. The products of the project need to be picked up by the line organisation, and if this involves change in the organisation or ways of working, the changes must be made to stick. By ensuring that the responsibilities for project management and business change are well assigned in a project there is an increased chance of success.

My Story: Working Smarter; Not Harder

Susanne Madsens own story of her journey from stressed and overworked project manager, to discovery of smarter working practices and a more fulfilling working life. 'When you realise that you have the power to change your beliefs and remove a limiting factor that has been constraining you, you have an aha! moment. You feel relieved and empowered.'

What a Heart Surgeon Could Learn From a Project Manager

The surgeon could learn a few things from project managers about how to create a sound work management (surgery management) methodology. Project managers could also learn from this study. 'We caught basic mistakes and some of the stupid stuff,' Gawande reports. 'We also found that good teamwork required certain things that we missed very frequently.'

Every Beginning is Difficult

New undertakings or experiences are always challenging at first. This is no different when Schenker Singapore (Pte) Ltd, a transport and logistics company decided to embark on something new - a Lean Six Sigma programme. It might seem to be even more demanding at the outset since the number of 3rd party logistics providers rising to this challenge is limited. Best practices in this industry are not widespread and hard to come by. This is the story of what happened.

Project Management Approach for Business Process Improvement

Business process improvement initiatives are frequently key projects within an organisation, regardless of the size of the organisation or, frankly, the size of the business process improvement initiative. Even if a business process improvement initiative is targeted at an individual department, the impact of the change will be organisation-wide.

The Best Project Managers are Emotion-driven Leaders

Charles J. Pellerins own personal ill-fated story, as the project director for the launch of the Hubble telescope, on his journey to the discovery of true leadership. This journey not only got him to redeem himself through an officially unauthorised 60M US$ fix mission to get astronauts to repair the telescope, but also got him to better understand the root of true leadership and design a system to make it happen.

Using ROI to Evaluate Project Management Training

Return on Investment (ROI) is a monetary measurement that is used to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of an investment made by an organisation. Investments take many forms, financial, human capital, equipment, and training programmes, to name just a few. This article will focus on the use of ROI and the Phillips ROI Methodology to measure the effectiveness of a project management training programme completed within XYZ Law Firm.

The Hidden Costs and Dangers of the Shortcut

We live in a world where we are often pressured to take shortcuts to save time and cut costs as much as possible. However, if youre not a skilled and experienced project manager, the wrong shortcut could end up costing you a lot more. Heres an anecdote to think about.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Project Management

Corporations are more sensitive to social issues and image than ever before. This sensitivity has given rise to CSR initiatives, but the question is: 'How do I rationalise the organisations demands for CSR with my projects objectives?' While there are no easy answers to this question, this article uses actual examples to point out what to avoid and offers tips and tricks on how to rationalise CSR and project objectives.

Green Projects

More and more emphasis is being placed on projects that help our environment, or are at least compatible with the environment. These projects are commonly referred to as 'green' projects. Whether 'greening' is an adjunct to the project, or a project objective more and more projects ar

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Processes

9 Processes

9.1 Introduction

9.1.1Definition of a Process

A business process, simply defined, is any activity, or set of activities designed to change one or more inputs – which may be physical or information- into one or more outputs. It is desirable, although not universally true, that a process should in some way add value to the inputs so that the output is worth more than the combined value of the inputs and the processing. Figure 9.1.1 show this in diagrammatic form.

Figure 9.1. A process

Based on this definition, a process can refer to a physical manufacturing process or to a virtual or service operation where the output is not a physical product – a doctorrsquo;s advice, or the transfer of funds between bank accounts for example.

9.1.2Production as a System

In chapter 2 we introduced Demingrsquo;s model as shown in figure 9.2.

The model looks initially chaotic, but simply reflects the myriad of activities that go on within a production environment.

The flow is as follows:

bull; Consumer research drives an initial design.

bull; This is flowed down to suppliers who pass material into the organization.

bull; The material is verified to design and passed into production.

bull; Processes, machines, methods etc. are monitored as the material flows through the production process.

bull; On successful completion goods flow into the distribution chain to consumers, whose feedback is sought to drive design changes as appropriate, and the cycle begins again.

This concept is hardly revolutionary now and, indeed, the wording of the model may look rather dated. However, the recognition that outputs of a process are clearly driven by inputs was the vital first step on the road to managing processes rather than outcomes. It may also be worthy of note that, even today, many management approaches spend more time focusing on the outcome than the means to achieve them (MBO and performance appraisal are perhaps chief amongst these).

Deming made some supplementary points on viewing production as a system. He noted that lsquo;the system must have an aimrsquo; (defined by the customer of the process). An obvious comment, but it is amazing how often we lose sight of the end goal of the process in the endless debates over precedent and practicality which attend most manufacturing processes.

Deming also noted that in the increasingly competitive production environment of recent years it is necessary to improve the system lsquo;constantly and foreverrsquo;.

Perhaps the most insightful of his comments is that:

“Every organization is perfectly designed to achieve the results that they do” (Deming, 1990)

This encapsulates the fact that processes drive results, and that if you wish to change the results you need to change the processes. Process design and management are thus seen as key to performing on all business measures. This demands a purposeful and planned approach to defining and refining the system with which we attempt to achieve our aims.

9.2 Business Processes: The Reality

Although Demingrsquo;s model is intuitively logical it can be seen that in many organizations the reality is that there exist lsquo;functional silosrsquo; within the process. This is due to different departments or groups of experts lsquo;owningrsquo; parts of the process and often having measures which conflict with each other.

Figure 9.3 shows schematically how this might look. The typical lsquo;ownerrsquo; departments are shown in each coloured segment and indications of key measurements that might be applied are shown in bold. It is interesting to note that the interfaces on this diagram require careful management if conflict is to be avoided. This, in effect, is where the continuous process model is most likely to break down with sub-process optimisation and local goals taking precedence over the broader picture. This picture is why the cry “I canrsquo;t believe they work for the same company as me!” is so common, everyone is being driven by different goals so that the commonality of purpose one might reasonably expect breaks down. No doubt this gave rise to Demingrsquo;s point 9 in his 14 points (Deming, 1990) lsquo;Break Down Barriers Between Departmentsrsquo; where he expounds the virtues of the systems vision which optimises the whole rather than individual parts of the system.

Until departments can look beyond their own boundaries conflict will always exist. It can be argued that this integrating function is, perhaps the key function of management. Developing the vision and buy-in required to make this a reality can be supported by the application of Hoshin Kanri planning systems, (see Strategic Quality Management notes). Deming in his System of Profound Knowledge provides a holistic theory of process management.

9.3 Process Planning

Processes need to be planned in order to be successful, in previous sections we have discussed how corporate goals and visions can be deployed to departmental/process levels. This section looks at a methodology for creating a process focused on the needs of the customers of this process. The approach suggested is based on the QFD process-planning matrix as shown in figure 9.3

The process-planning matrix links the customer requirements (prioritised by importance on the left hand side of the diagram) to the process parameters (across the top) via the relationships matrix in the centre of the chart. The process owners in consultation with customers and process fact holders will fill in this chart. Where difficulty is experienced in filling in the chart it will indicate a need to develop process understanding further via discussion or experimentation. An example of a completed chart for bulk drug manufacture process, which is then dispensed into phials by a subsequent process, is shown in figure 9.4.

The chart allows for emphasis to be put on th

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