Project management case study of a custom woodworking company

Woody's Case

Woody's

The background of this case is relatively straightforward, despite the complexities of the described project's ultimate failure. The younger generation of the company's leadership wanted to see Woody's, a manufacturing concern, enlarged so it could take a greater market share and respond to increases in demand. While these goals might have been laudable in a general sense, the project suffered from a great deal of lack of foresight and planning, major communication issues among the various project leaders and designers, and an overall lack of control that led to many expenditures, a significant loss in productivity, and a near-total failure that had a negative impact on morale and company loyalty. No one acted with malicious intent or even laziness in order to lead to the outcome in the attempted expansion project, but a lack of expertise and over-ambition caused a failure nonetheless.

The solution to this problem depends upon where in the case intervention is to occur. Starting out with a better plan for the project, maintaining more centralized project leadership so that all elements remained coordinated, and ensuring that adequate communication took place between all stakeholders as each phase of the project was first planned and then put into motion would have made the outcome of the project much better. At this point, the only real solution is to attempt to restore the factory to a useable form in the shortest time possible, so that manufacturing and thus revenue streams can resume. Long-term adjustments could eventually finish the expansion project as intended, though these should be managed through the collective planning and action of all of the company's leaders.

Using a program such as MS Project or OpenProj, a timeline for the more successful execution of the original expansion attempt will be created along with deliverables for each phase of the project, key individuals in charge of the design and implementation of each phase, and the resources that will be necessary to complete each individual step will also be detailed. These programs allow several different layouts to be presented for different views on the project and certain details within the project's framework; several different methods will be used to show the project from a budgetary standpoint, a timeline for the implementation and completion of the various project phases as well as the project as a whole, and task charts that will help to break down each phase into manageable steps. This will also enable specific task allocation to the various individuals involved.