HK clearly does not have a monitoring system in place to manage the costs. Additional costs have risen which the company had not accounted for before like the costs associated with upgrading the company software. The company now has the opportunity to develop an integrated information system which will help understand planned and actual costs. The earned value system starts with the time-phased costs that provide the project budget baseline, which is called the planned budgeted value of the work scheduled (PV). Given this time-phased baseline, comparisons can be made with actual and planned schedule and costs using a concept called earned value. The earned value system uses data developed from the work breakdown structure, the project network, and schedule (Gray & Larson, 2006).
Stakeholder Perspectives/Ethical Dilemmas
Main stakeholders that are affected in this scenario include Meg McGill, company CEO, authors and writers, employees and board of directors and consumers. Meg’s interest lies in company profits, growth and overall market value of the company. She has the right to make company-wide decisions. Her decision to start the e-books project has many other stakeholders concerned and in conflict. This is because the company has no experience of the e-books business.
Authors and writers interest lies in selling their work and making profits while getting recognition and appreciation. This group’s rights involve getting competitive contracts, concern with copyright and piracy issues to avoid unauthorized distribution of their work. Authors and writers values lie in the authenticity of their work. Consumers are already concerned with company’s falling stock prices and they are aware of the reduction in company sales. This can be a vicious cycle, which in turn causes many consumers to deviate from their usual shopping store.
Management’s interest lies in company betterment. Their rights involve making company-wide decisions and implementing changes. Their values lie in recognition and profits. The board of directors and other executives in the management believes that Meg did not consult with them prior to making the decision of launching e-books. Moreover, vendors are also a part of company stakeholders. Asia Digital an outsourcing company based in India is also a part of stakeholders that will be impacted with company decision to launch e-books. They already have a task in hand that they are lacking behind on. Any decision of the company to pursue the contract with Asia Digital further or to move on to another outsourcing company will impact Asia Digital.
End-State Vision
HK’s revenue has increased sales by 25% after introducing e-books to their e-business catalog. The company has a contract with Asia Digital to format the e-books and due to the previous success of the project, HK has decided to continue with the contract and have Asia Digital be a part of upcoming projects. The cultural and geographical barriers between employees of HK and Asia Digital have narrowed following a cultural education seminar for employees at both ends. Employees now understand each other’s environment, religions and geographical distribution better and act accordingly when dealing with subordinated at the other continent.
The software upgrade has increased consumer and executive confidence in e-books distribution. The additional costs for setting up the software were a challenge but HK completed the upgrade on time and without issues at launch. An IT team has been set up that monitors the software performance, work on consumer feedbacks to improve performance and general software maintenance. New contracts and increased sales have attracted many more authors to get in contract with HK’s Publishing.
Gap Analysis
HK wants to be the leading publishing company in the industry. The company focus is to increase sales and consumer base. The company is facing challenges from the ever changing market, consumer demands and competitors. The external as well as internal factors are affecting company’s performance. The management has no set course of action in place to develop and act upon a strategy. Some authors are in conflict with the company because of their uncertainty in copyrights and piracy control for e-books. The outsourcing company seems to miss all deadlines impacting launch and production times. The company needs a strategic alignment of process with company goals and needs an implementation plan.
HK needs a project control process as described by Gray and Larson (2006), Control is the process of comparing actual performance against plan to identify deviations, evaluate possible alternative courses of actions, and take appropriate corrective action. The project control steps for measuring and evaluating project performance are presented below.
1. Setting a baseline plan.
2. Measuring progress and performance.
3. Comparing plan against actual.
4. Taking action
Project management control systems are the modern tools for managing project scope, cost and schedule. They are based on carefully defined process and document controls, metrics, performance indicators and forecasting with capability to reveal trends toward cost overrun and schedule slippage. Identifying those trends early makes them more amenable to successful management.
HK will first set a baseline. The baseline is derived from the cost and duration information found in the work breakdown structure (WBS) database and time-sequence data from the network and resource scheduling decisions. The WBS defines the work in discrete work packages that are tied to deliverables and organization units. In addition, each work package defines the work, duration, and budget. This will create a Work Breakdown System involving all employees and the management team (Gray & Larson, 2006).
Second step involves measuring performance and progress. HK can develop a Gantt’s and PERT’s chart to monitor the progress and manage task interdependence. Time and budgets are quantitative measures of performance that readily fit into the integrated information system. Next step helps comparing the actual with the current state for HK. Because plans seldom materialize as expected; it becomes imperative to measure deviations from plan to determine if action is necessary. Periodic monitoring and measuring the status of the project allow for comparisons of actual versus expected plans. It is crucial that the timing of status reports be frequent enough to allow for early detection of variations from plan and early correction of causes (Gray & Larson, 2006).
Finally the company will determine the course of action after rectifying the issues, barriers and conflicts. If deviations from plans are significant, corrective action will be needed to bring the project back in line with the original or revised plan. In some cases, conditions or scope can change, which, in turn, will require a change in the baseline plan to recognize new information (Gray & Larson, 2006).
Conclusion
Harrison-Keys is a struggling publishing company that has recently seen reduced sales and competitor pressure. To cope with the changes in the market the company has decided to venture into e-books business. The company’s need for a project control process is apparent. Following this gap analysis the company’s end state vision is coming to reality. The company not only needs to focus on cost control but also resources and employee control. Following the steps in project control process will be ideal for HK if the company wants to bridge the gap between current and final results.
References
Gray, C. F., & Larson, E. W. (2006). Project management: The managerial process (3rd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
University of Phoenix. (2009). Managing project risk [Computer Software]. Retrieved from University of Phoenix, Simulation, MBA 590 - Strategic Implementation and Alignment website.
Table 1
Issue and Opportunity Identification
Table 2
Stakeholder Perspectives
Table 3
End State Goals
