Syndicate 5 – BLEMBA62 MM5004 Operations Management

Rama Alexander Hehuwat 29119379 Project Management Simulation

SCENARIO A
Scenario Description
Senior management expects you to release a new printer retaining rough parity with the competitor's new printer.
The projected schedule allows you to ramp up manufacturing and marketing quickly enough to match the
competitor's new printer profile with your own printer. The target budget supports a cost structure that will permit
profit margins at a level roughly equivalent to those of the current printer. Market intelligence gathered on your
competitor’s plans is considered reliable, so the target specifications for your new printer, required to retain parity
with their new printer, are clearly defined, well understood, and expected to remain stable throughout the project.
Management has indicated that scope, schedule and cost are of equal importance in a successful launch, and they
have committed to providing stable access to resources during the project.

Results

Strategy
- To maintain the cost of production and the target on schedule that was made by the management
- Less is more: We manage our team size as efficient as it can be to manage personnel cost with skill
required just medium (to prepare the project implementation and all administration required) and slowly
change it to the basic skill level until the last week of project completion
- We manage coaching just until the second prototypes were launched and from there we don’t use any
coaching time because we assume that the employees already understand their tasks and duties
- We choose to make 4 prototypes before launching our product to make sure it is well tested and get
enough feedback from the management
- We choose to encourage the employees to take overtime to make sure the project is running on time
- We choose to outsource extensively to minimize all administrative tasks and other critical tasks so the
employees can focus on supervising and maintaining the complex tasks in this project
Lesson Learnt
- With enough team size from the beginning until last week of project, we manage to finish this project in the
20th week
- We are about 2 weeks late from our target, and we see that the problem is because we rarely improved our
meeting strategy based on the feedback given by the employee
- Team skill also play critical part, maybe we can improve the employees skill in the last 3 weeks to complete
their tasks earlier

SCENARIO B
Scenario Description
Senior management expects you to release a new printer which will upstage the competitor's expected new printer
announcement. The target schedule is shortened to allow you to ramp up manufacturing and marketing soon
enough to pre-empt the competitor announcement with an announcement of your own. The budget will support a
cost structure that permits a profit margin which is slightly better than the current printer's margin. Your own analysis
of the work required and subsequent work breakdown structure has lead to you conclude that these targets are
difficult but achievable. Market intelligence gathered on the competitor’s plans is considered reliable, so the target
specs for your new printer, required to upstage your competitor’s new printer, are reasonably well
defined/understood, and expected to remain stable throughout the project. Comparatively, you are pleased that your
project is reasonably staffed because other Project Managers are struggling to complete their work with limited
resources.
Aggressive recruiting from rival firm Primatech has led to several of your team members departing from the project.
Other projects at Delphi are similarly impacted. Due to heavy competition for new hires, the HR departments tells
you that it will be at least three weeks before you are able to bring anybody new on board.

Results

Strategy
- Enough employees in the beginning of the project, recruiting more employees in the middle of project
timelines to empower the completion of 4 prototypes, and slowly reducing employees until the last week of
the project to reduce personnel cost.
- Improve our strategy from the first scenario, with increasing the team skill in the last weeks of the project
- Still make 4 prototypes before launching our product to make sure it is well tested and get enough feedback
from the management
 - Still choose to encourage the employees to take overtime to make sure the project is running on time
- Still choose to outsource extensively to minimize all administrative tasks and other critical tasks so the
employees can focus on supervising and maintaining the complex tasks in this project

Lesson Learnt
- With just minimum improvement in terms of strategy and also there is a problem occurring in this scenario
(the employee hijacking), we end up with the same situation as the first scenario, late delivery of project
finishing.
- Although we tried to increase the team skill from week 16, it didn’t significantly improve the target
completion because we reduced the size of the team. Maybe we could try to increase the team skill in week
16 but just reduce the team size to 4 people and maintain the same amount of employees until the last
week of the project.
- Now we learn to just run a meetings or coaching based on the employee’s feedback

SCENARIO C
Scenario Description
You are a senior project manager at Delphi Printers & Peripherals, a small electronics and computer peripheral
manufacturer based in Santa Clara, California. You have been tasked with assembling and directing a product
design team to develop a new and innovative consumer printer. Delphi has intelligence suggesting that a competitor
is launching a printer with similar features and capabilities in 6 months, putting pressure on you and your team to
develop a new printer that can compete effectively against the competitor's offering.Your primary competitor has just
announced they will be moving up their launch date by five weeks. In order to achieve competitive parity,
management has informed you that you will also need to release the product five weeks ahead of the initial
management target date. Due to the increased importance of meeting the schedule, you will receive 50 additional
points for on-time delivery.
Results

Strategy
- Based on the summary, we understand that there will be a problem either in the beginning phase of the
project or in the middle phase caused by the information of the competitor's product launching date. So we
maintain our personnel cost lower than the management estimation, and try to save it for when the problem
occured.
- Because of the positive and effective effect from the earlier scenario, we still make 4 prototypes before
launching our product to make sure it is well tested and get enough feedback from the management
 - Still choose to encourage the employees to take overtime to make sure the project is running on time
- Still choose to outsource extensively to minimize all administrative tasks and other critical tasks so the
employees can focus on supervising and maintaining the complex tasks in this project
Lesson Learnt
- As expected, the problem occured in Week 7. We try to fill the gap by also changing our target to 12 weeks.
Of course this affects the employees. They tend to experienced morale problems and higher level of stress
but are still okay.
- From week 8, every coaching, standup and status update are being eliminated or just run by request as
needed. We are focusing on task force and gradually recruit more and more employees until week 11 to
maintain the target completion
- We are finishing our target late than the management expectation, but on the other side, if the target
remains the same, we are successfully managing our target completed ahead of time.
- Maybe we can try to add some more personnel at the team with high skill so they will completed more task
within the deadline