Woody 2000 industrial facilities expansion project management issues

Woody 2000 -- Project Outline

The Woody 2000 project represents an industrial facilities expansion for a growing small-to-midsize (SME) business that produces custom furniture and cabinets. This SME, The Custom Woodworking Company, has designated a seventeen million dollar project budget with the goal of adding an equivalent of twenty five percent to their existing production floor space as well as introducing some modern equipment with some level of automation. The project is to be managed a company known as Expert Industrial Developers (EID) who has been contract on a cost plus basis after the project stakeholders refused an initial offer of twenty million dollar project budget with an estimated eighteen month project duration.

Company Background

Custom Woodwork Company (Woody's) began as a small scale furniture business that is now medium scale, manufacturing cabinets and furniture for industrial estates. Currently, the asset base is over $180 million with revenues over $96 million.

Project Issues and Response Plan

PMI, (2008, p. 6) distinguishes project management as "the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements." To successfully deliver the project within the 18 months' timeframe, $17 million budget and within design and process specifications, the application of all 5 process groups and 9 knowledge areas are necessary, as well as the application of MS Project. Several different aspects of poor project management were identified upon review of this case. These range from typical project implications that are a result of scope creep to poor communication and change management processes throughout the duration of the project.

The first aspect to project management that was deemed to be insufficient in this project was risk management. There seemed to be little or no risk management conducted before or during the project's duration. It is reasonable to suspect that proper risk planning could have worked to identify many of the problems that the project experienced during the planning phase. Another aspect of the project that was also immediately deemed insufficient was the lack of a change management plan or a system developed to control change. In response to these issues the project a new project plan must be administered to bring the project back on track.

Time, Resources, and Cost Issues

There were many additional costs that were incurred beyond that of the actual project. First of all, the project ended up affecting the main business operations which had a serious detrimental effect on the competiveness of the overall business. Therefore not only was the project a failure in terms of its budget, but it also cost the company unknown amounts for the delay in its main production operations. Furthermore, even after the project finally came to a completion, the end users were not satisfied with the design of the train at all. In retrospect they should have been brought on board in the design phase to ensure that their needs were accounted for; something an experienced project manager would have surely known.

Final Project Deliverables

The final project will deliver a new time and cost summary for a revised work breakdown structure, a revised statement of work, and a new project schedule maintained in MS Project. Tasks and responsibilities during the JPPS are established (Wysocki, 2012, p. 157-168). Deliverables like Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) established, reducing the project into smaller activities (Kerzner, 2009) enabling easier identification of tasks. Statement of Work (SOW) delivered, defining task and works (Kerzner, 2009). The SOW is a project document defining activities needed to be undertaken and their deliverables and timelines within which, these activities should be conducted. Furthermore, monitoring ensures project tasks are implemented within schedule (PMI, 2008).