Project Management Case Study: Horizon Consulting App

Case Introduction and Summary

Horizon is a company that develops applications for smartphones and had been experiencing considerable success. However, things took a turn when, at a meeting attended by everyone involved in building an iPhone app, the team — including the head of the software engineering department — learned that their TAT application had been rejected by Apple iOS. TAT was a phone app for which one of the team members had served as project lead. The app was notable because it allowed subscribers to reserve and view, in real time, which swimming lanes were available at a prestigious athletic club. No one was pleased with the news.

It was understood that before the TAT app could go live, it had to be submitted and approved by Apple. This was not usually a problem, but Apple had recently been rejecting apps for a variety of reasons. One of the workers circulated a list of changes that would need to be made before Apple would approve the app. The group reviewed the list, and in some cases pushed back against the new requirements.

At the meeting, the group was not expecting the rejection and was effectively sent back to the drawing board. Management asked the engineers who had worked on the project to go back and revise everything. They suggested that the same engineers who started the project should be the ones to finish it, so they would all be reassigned to the TAT project. Those affected were expected to meet after the main meeting to determine how to address everything Apple iOS had flagged. The meeting then continued as planned, with each account manager reporting the status of their projects and sharing relevant information with the group.

The central issue in this case study is that the TAT project was submitted with defects, and that management failed to provide adequate oversight to ensure the app was complete and ready before submission. The team proceeded without sufficient review, which led directly to the rejection from Apple iOS.

Case Issue Analysis

This situation relates most closely to a group management type of process. A process can be understood as a series of actions directed toward a particular result — in Horizon's case, the successful completion and launch of the TAT project. As the case makes clear, project management process groups develop by introducing activities for planning, execution, monitoring and control, and closure (Archbold).

The planning process involves developing and maintaining a practical framework to ensure a project meets the organization's needs. There are numerous strategies within a project plan — for example, a schedule management plan, a scope management plan, a cost management plan, a purchasing management plan, and others — each defining a knowledge area as it relates to the project at a given point in time (Archbold). In the Horizon Consulting case, the project team needed to develop a plan describing the work to be completed, schedule the related activities, estimate the costs of executing that work, and determine what resources would be needed to accomplish it.

Project Management Processes Applied

In Horizon Consulting, the output of the planning process was especially important. The primary output was the completion of the project scope statement for the TAT project, which was a technology-based initiative. Planning is particularly critical in information technology projects. As the research suggests, everyone who has worked on a large information technology project involving new technology has heard some version of the principle: a dollar spent in planning upfront is worth one hundred dollars spent after the system has already been deployed.

Planning to implement the TAT project was therefore crucial. Research suggests that organizations working to implement best practices should spend at least 20% of project time in the initiation and planning phases (Archbold). In developments like this one, the effort invested in planning directly affects how difficult it will be to make changes once the system is in place — because once a project team deploys a new system, it takes a substantial amount of effort to alter it.

One of the project management process techniques applied in this case was the matrix organizational structure. Horizon Consulting operates within a matrix organizational structure, which is typically described as one where there are multiple reporting lines (Johnson). In practice, this means individuals have more than one formal manager. This can involve solid lines and dotted lines of authority, or in some cases multiple solid lines to more than one superior.

From the case study, it is evident that Horizon is organized into three departments: Sales, Graphics, and Software Development. Account managers from the Sales department also serve as project managers. These project managers, in turn, oversee resources drawn from all three departments. Within each department, employees are assigned to specific roles. Some engineers would work on a single project full-time, while others might be assigned to multiple projects simultaneously (Johnson). Department heads supervised engineers' projects and schedules, while account managers reported to the Manager of Sales.

There were also two key factors that contributed to the success of the post-meeting. According to Johnson, these are structure and culture. The structure of the project classification system articulated the key tasks that needed to be completed, enabling project managers to identify which projects were highest priority and which required specific resources more readily than others.

Conclusion

Johnson, Rose. Advantages & Disadvantages of Matrix Organizational Structures in Business Organizations. 5 May 2013. Accessed 21 October 2015.