Project management strategy for Good Circuit Company's breach of contract defense

Project Management in a Legal Context

Project management is increasingly becoming a popular and preferred way of contending with inter-organizational ventures that are out of the ordinary. When the functions of a project require the involvement of specialized personnel and skill sets which may not be readily represented from within the company to the fullest extent demanded, it may be appropriate to organize a project team. This might be comprised of current employees and temporary hires with specialized and pertinent skills. In either event, project management requires a competent and strong project leader.

This is especially true in the current case scenario, which finds Good Circuit Company (GCC) defending itself against a legal claim for Breach of Contract on behalf of the Tuffy Cleaning Company. Because Good Circuit Company is not a legal entity and because the company is relatively modest in size, we do not keep a large and comprehensive legal team on staff. This means that defense of the lawsuit brought on by Tuffy Cleaning Company would be best channeled through an internal but independent project management team. As the project manager, it is incumbent upon me to prepare for this legal challenge by taking the appropriate steps toward comprehensive project management.

To this end, according to the text by Gray & Larson (2005), there are five major steps to the Project Planning process. The text defines these as Schedules, Budgets, Resources, Risks and Staffing. Therefore, these are the phases of the Project Plan that are discussed here below.

Schedules

As we design a schedule for contending with the legal challenge ahead of us, it will required management of an array of factors. As the text by Gray & Larson indicates, the project manager "must ensure that the appropriate trade-offs are made between the time, cost, and performance requirements of the project. At the same time, unlike their functional counterparts, project managers generally possess only rudimentary technical knowledge to make such decisions. Instead, they must orchestrate the completion of the project by inducing the right people, at the right time, to address the right issues and make the right decisions." (p. 7)

This requires the identification of critical tasks and their benchmarked deadlines. Namely, in this case, we consider the tasks as follows:

Legal Discovery: Here, it will be incumbent upon us to determine to what degree Tuffy Cleaning Company has a case against us. This will include review of the case documents prepared by Tuffy, a deconstruction of the contract allegedly breached, a determination of the privacy rights impacted by its data request and a general investigation into the legal conditions that may or may not determine a successful defense against these claims. This phase must be completed in the scope of three months.

Internal Investigation: The internal investigation would require surveys amongst employees, review of internal data files and a delineation of the history of the company's relationship with Tuffy. These aspect of project management should yield evidence confirming or refuting Tuffy's claims. This phase should be completed in the scope of 1.5 months.

Argument Preparation: With the facts gathered both legally and internally, our legal team can begin to prepare an argument for presentation in court or for pursuit of a settlement. Argument preparation should require roughly 2 months.

Legal Case Presentation: The presentation of the case either in a settlement context or a court setting will be scheduled according to the court's determination.

Budgets

One of the difficulties inherent to project management is the demand to establish a budget even a certain elements remain in flux. Indeed, as Gray & Larson indicate, the project manager is "expected to marshal resources to complete a fixed-life project on time, on budget, and within specifications." (p. 7) In this case, this will be substantially defined by the hourly cost of legal personnel brought on board to handle the legal matter. Because legal hourly fees can be highly variable, it is difficult to project an exact budget. However, given the space of time allotted in the schedule here above, this budget will ultimately be calculated based on the cost and quantity of legal personnel acquired for the project within the scope of said duration.

Resources

The resources required to carry out this project are a combination of human resources (both legal and internally investigative) and the technical resources that will allow a review of company data.

Staffing

The role of project manager is, of course, not just simply ensuring that the practical dimensions of the job are accounted for or that the operational functions are properly delegated. There is a critical degree of human management that must also enter into project management planning such that the personnel dispatched to serve certain functions are both apprised of the expectations before them and feel that they have a vested interest in meeting those expectations. According to the text by Gray & Larson, "project management is both people and technical oriented. Project Management involved understanding the cause-effect relationships and interactions among the socio-technical dimensions of projects. Improved competency in these dimensions will greatly enhance your competitive edge as a project manager." (Gray & Larson, xii) This denotes that I will be faced with the singular challenge of coordinating a legal team in spite of the limitations of my own knowledge in this field.

Conclusion

Ultimately, it seems appropriate to pursue a two-pronged strategy in this project of both forging a meaningful defense against the claims made by Tuffy Cleaning Company and in establishing a compromise with respect to data-access in the event that this defense fails.

Works Cited:

Gray, C.F. & Larson, E.W. (2005).Project management the managerial process. McGraw-Hill.

United States District Court (2013). Case NO. 12-45390 Complain for Breach of Contact. Western District of Washington at Seattle.