Project Management Compare and Contrast

Project Management

Compare and contrast Teradyne's traditional project execution strategy to the approach it used in Jaguar? What was similar? What was different?

Teradyne traditionally relied on a more collaborative approach to project execution strategies, even going so far as to tell engineers to select the tools they most would prefer to use. This was done to give engineers mastery over their specific areas of expertise. Teradyne also had a very lax set of standards in place for defining milestones, accountability by project task, and no consistent set of practices for defining stage-gate responsibilities as well. In short, the Teradyne culture which focused so much on the autonomy of engineers to select tools was losing the ability to complete projects on time. This was further exacerbated by the complexity of managing software projects, an area unknown to the company. Progressing through TQM to RPD, Teradyne failed to solve this problem as these two techniques further lost credibility in the company.

Jaguar's similarities to the previous approaches are culturally and methodologically driven. The first similarity is that like previous approaches at project management in Teradyne, Jaguar was a highly structured process that attempted to get the myriad of project details organized into work breakdown structure. Second, like traditional project executions strategies, Jaguar also struggled with software development task estimation and closure. Third, Jaguar relied in the end on panic over planning to get the new system out the door for AlphaTech just as projects had been managed at Teradyne.

The differences however were significant. Jaguar attempted to create a more intensive up-front planning process to accomplish the date of March 30, 2004. Jaguar also defined a standardized set of development tools including a Work Breakdown Structure, 3-Point Estimation, Critical Path analysis, and Earned Value analysis. Primavera, an enterprise-level project management application was used for managing the critical path. Second, the use of a company-wide cross-functional team was put into place that spanned Boston, San Jose, Agoura Hills, Minneapolis, and Portland. This was a significant departure for the company as it had relied previously only on isolated project management teams in various locations. Third, jaguar made a concerted attempt to make software development more effective, including the use of IG-XL platform development and FLEX code base.

2. What impact did the project management tools have on the Jaguar project? Specifically, how did they change behaviour? How did they influence performance?

The combination of Jack O'Brien's no-nonsense leadership and the high levels of accountability that the new tools brought to the company made the project management tasks the company does well already increase in performance, notably hardware. It did not however help to alleviate the confusion of software development. The order from AlphaTech had a much more galvanizing effect on the software aspects of the project, which still was significantly miscalculated as the company reverted to 80-hour work weeks to get the project done. Overall however the project management tools on the Jaguar project did change behaviour over time in that there were greater levels of accountability for performance. As is the case with any new methodologies or approaches to completing work there was also significant resistance to change. This is entirely expected given the fact that many of the engineers had exceptional levels of freedom in the past.

3. What were the unintended consequences of using the project management tools? What lessons should Teradyne take way from the Jaguar project?