Project Management: Key Leadership Challenges
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Added on 2020-03-16
Project Management: Key Leadership Challenges
Added on 2020-03-16
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Running Head: PROJECT MANAGEMENT 1Project ManagementNameInstitutionDate
PROJECT MANAGEMENT 2 Project Management1.Key leadership challengesPoor coordinationThere were two teams of developers working separately. One specialized in developinghardware while the other was concerned in software development. These two groups were notwell planned to maintain required coordination. There was a situation that posed a problem whenHardware engineers managed to come up with a phone design and working prototype but therewas no functioning software to run the models. This was as a result of lack of measures tocoordinate control process that needed to govern production. Poor risk managementRisk management of this project was not considered worth analyzing. Apple tried to enterinto contract with other stakeholders without considering how to manage arising risk. This wasseen as a major blow as some of targeted stakeholders like Verizon withdrew after seeing theproject as a big joke. This left the project at the mercies of further consideration by Cingular.Cingular however came to its rescue eventually.Inadequate Resources. The project faced limited resources in terms of finances, equipment and skills. With theuncertainty surrounding the project about what to expect, it was hard for apple to secure a willingfinancier. Since its viability was hard to gauge and given the confidentiality with which it wascarried out, potential financiers were scared away. The company was also determined to be intotal control of design, manufacturing and marketing of the phone. It also suffered Lack ofequipment to test the phone, signal strength, antennae radiations etc. This posed a great challengeto management of this project. The available and newly purchased equipment required skilled
PROJECT MANAGEMENT 3personnel, who were not readily available in the initial stages of the project. This slowed downthe speed of project.Undefined goals.By the time Project Purple was kicking off, the main and specific objectives of the projectwere not clearly defined. It was not clear who the main stakeholders were to be, if to engage anetwork carrier company or not and what chronology of events to expect. The project wascharacterized with ambiguous plans that did not give definite or clear results. This ambiguity inhow the display of the phone should look like forced the project to be closed for some time(Zdziarski, 2008).Inadequate skillsAt the beginning of the project, the project did not have skills needed to develop a phone.Apple was a computer making company before the commencement of this project. Its workerswho were, in the first stages, adopted to undertake the project had little or no phone manufactureexperience. It was hard to optimize processes as the project did not have phone engineers.Phone’s wireless capabilities were weak and the option of hiring specialists was unavoidable.Lack of accountabilityCingular top management was reluctant to enter into a contract without seeing theproduct because they could neither agree to be held accountable nor take responsibility in case ofloss. Also they were not in terms with the fact that this potential partner could claim a fraction oftheir own profit as the contract suggested.Lack of cooperation by other telecommunication stakeholdersWireless carriers wanted control over phones. They wanted to control how much theywould cost and what features would be available in them, something that Stephen Jobs objected.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT 4Carriers viewed phones as gadgets whose purpose to snare their subscribers into using thecarriers’ services. They would not cooperate if not given control over this. This was the reasonthat the little and scattered moments of attention they would give to purple project were mostlyfutile.DeadlinesStrict deadlines posed a big challenge to this project. It was hard to meet deadlines asthere were always unforeseen circumstances that kept on arising. One event was connected toanother and time was an essential factor. For example phone model presentation was strickenhard by a strict deadline. IPhone development had been planned to be the centerpiece of applesannual event known as Macworld convention in only a few months. Much was still undone. Yetit needed to be ready because it was considered a big announcement and customers awaited thisannouncement. Furthermore a new version of apples operating system which by then was knownas “leopard” had been announced to be delayed (Murtazin and Eldar, 2010). Key performance indicators for the projectTimeline Cycle time this is time needed to complete a given task during the project cycle. This forexample could be taken as measure of time taken to come up with touch screen display that theiphone would use input and output means.On-time completion percentage. This shows whether a task was able to be completed beforedeadline or not. This performance indicator was used to test performance of the project bydetermining if a component could be produced on or before deadline. The model that was to beunveiled during Macworld convention was a good measure of performance.
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