Quasar Communications Case: Change Requirements and Project Management

This document provides a solution to the Quasar Communications, Inc. (QCI) case study, addressing issues identified in R&D, small customer, large customer, and capital equipment project management. Key problems include conflicting priorities, poor communication between marketing and engineering, and an excessive number of simultaneous projects. The proposed solution involves implementing a demand management process to align supply with demand and effective monitoring techniques to reduce departmental conflicts. It also recommends establishing a liaison office to improve communication and appointing a Chief Project Manager to oversee the project lifecycle, encompassing initiation, planning, designing, implementation, execution, controlling, and closure. The resource allocation includes team members focused on demand management and monitoring techniques, with the vice president continuously comparing actual versus planned performance and taking corrective actions. Successful implementation of these changes aims to enhance project performance, improve customer satisfaction, and achieve business objectives.

Change requirement and project
lifecycle

Throughout the case study, there were several problems that were identified by R&D project
management, small customer project management, large customer project management and
capital equipment project management. The first major problem that small customer project
managers identified that the small clients suffered in regards to the job priorities and time
commitment to business which leads client dissatisfaction. Marketing department and groups
needs are the major problems identified in R&D project. The issue identified with the
marketing department is that marketing people demand early implementation of goods and
also cancel the tasks (project) without R&D manager’s consultation.
Therefore from the analysis and evaluation it can be identified that there are two critical
issues associated with the organization. First the organization has too many projects
executing in same time. Second issues, both engineering and marketing department simply
not be able to understand each other issues or simply don’t appreciate or recognize each
other’s issues. The observation indicates that failure of coordination and communication
process occurred in the organization resulting to poor project performance and customer’s
dissatisfaction.
Organization needs to introduce change in project management plan which helps them to
solve issues and fulfil customers’ needs (Turner, 2014). From the given scenario, it can be
recommended that, organization needs to implement demand management process in supply
chain management process and implement effective monitoring techniques in business
process. Demand management process helps the organization to align supply with demand
and aids them to forecast the product sales as possible, which helps the marketing department
issues. In the nutshell, demand management helps the business to delivering value added
services in return and satisfy customer’s needs. Implementation of monitoring techniques
helps the different department of project management to reduce conflicts issues in successful
manner. It is also recommended that vice president needs to implement liaison office that
continuously receive the information from sales and marketing department and passes the
information to project managers.
Project management plan mainly includes, project scope, project objective, project aims, time
duration, key roles and responsibities. Implementation of recommendation changes would
help the organization to accomplish business objective and increases the performance in
better manner (Kerzner, & Kerzner, 2017). Aim of the project management change plan is to

reduce raised issues in different department in better manner and also provide an effective
and optimum solution to solve the issues. The resource in this project includes the 5 team
members, in which 3 members involved in Demand management process and remaining 2
involved in implementation of monitoring techniques. In addition to this, vice precedent of
an organization needs to continuously compare actual performance with progress
performance, and if there is any issues, then he/she can ask for suggestion and explanation
about corrective action. Presently an effective monitoring technique will help the vice
president to view progress report of each member and as per requirements and take corrective
action against adverse variation.
In order to successfully execute and implement the changes, vice president needs to appoint
Chief Project Manager to co-ordinate each project so that project management lifecycle
which involves initiation, planning, designing, implementation, execution, controlling and
monitoring, and closure (Burke, 2013). During the initiation and planning phase,
management needs to select the person who can successfully manage in monitoring and
demand management process. In addition to this, management needs to establish their roles
and responsibities (Meredith, & Mantel 2011). During designing and implementation phase,
management needs to provide training and development and assign the job. During execution
phase, each member need to work efficiently in provided time-scale of project cycle.
Therefore it is said that successfull implementation of above changes will aid the business to
address and solve issues in effective manner.

References
Turner, J. R. (2014). Handbook of project-based management(Vol. 92). New York, NY:
McGraw-hill.
Kerzner, H., & Kerzner, H. R. (2017). Project management: a systems approach to planning,
scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.
Burke, R. (2013). Project management: planning and control techniques. New Jersey, USA.
Meredith, J. R., & Mantel Jr, S. J. (2011). Project management: a managerial approach.
John Wiley & Sons.