New Technology Case Study

Industry

Heavy Equipment Manufacturing

Situation

The marketing department viewed this new technology project as a strategic competitive advantage. The engineering department viewed it as a significant challenge. During two years of development, the project incurred five months of delays due to various design and new vendor issues. In addition, the new technology failed to perform to specifications during the prototype test. As a result, the situation became so pronounced that management considered canceling the project.

To make matters worse, the company’s project management schedule provided no advance warning for these delays and little to no guidance to help managers make sound business decisions.

PMAlliance Solution

Following our two-day Duration-Driven® Planning & Control course, we worked with the cross-functional teams to create:

  • A project charter that clearly defined the remaining scope and objectives;
  • A top-level schedule that identified the project duration and displayed the major phases and deliverables; and
  • A detailed schedule package that identified the timing, duration, and responsibility of all project activities and forecasted the resource requirements necessary to execute the project according to schedule.

We also implemented our comprehensive project control process to monitor actual progress vs. the original plan and initiated the necessary corrective actions required to keep the project on-schedule.

PMAlliance reinforced the importance of teamwork and communication by collaborating closely with the project team during the development and update of the project plan. The team building process not only re-energized the team, but it also re-established individual accountability for the plan’s success and repaired reputations that were damaged during the earlier delays.

Outcome

Through our training, mentoring, and consulting; PMAlliance was able to transition our project management responsibilities to their internal company resources. Today, this company is successfully meeting the objectives of their new technology project and they are using our methodology, software add-in tools, and web update system to manage other tactical and strategic projects.

 

PMAlliance, Inc. is a project management consultingproject management training and project office development company. We partner with our clients to provide mission-critical services.

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