PROJ6000 - Principles of Project Management: Uber Case Study

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Uber's project management practices, focusing on the development of its driver application. It explores the application of PMBOK knowledge areas, including scope, quality, time, cost, and risk management. The report evaluates various project management approaches, such as phased, iterative, and process-based methods, and suggests tools and techniques for mitigating risks. It also delves into Uber's leadership styles, contrasting the approaches of former CEO Travis Kalanick and current CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, highlighting the importance of democratic leadership. The analysis emphasizes the need for effective risk and cost management within the organization and suggests improvements to enhance employee satisfaction and project success. The report concludes with a call for better integration of project management principles to avoid financial losses and foster a more positive work environment.

Running head: UBER CASE STUDY AND ANALYSIS
PROJECT MANAGEMENT IN UBER
[Name of the Student:]
[Name of the University:]
[Author Note:]

1UBER CASE STUDY AND ANALYSIS
EXECUTIVR SUMMARY
The following report analyses the case study of the new application development of Uber and
also the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) knowledge and reviews have been
made. An elaborate discussion on the risk management and quality management has been done
in this report and appropriate tools and techniques have been suggested for the resolving of the
problem. The leadership issues and problems have been also discussed in the report.

2UBER CASE STUDY AND ANALYSIS
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Discussion........................................................................................................................................3
PMBOK areas of knowledge.......................................................................................................3
Scope Management and Integration........................................................................................4
Quality management and management of time and cost.........................................................4
Management of risks................................................................................................................5
Approach of project management................................................................................................5
Tools and techniques for risk management.................................................................................6
Leadership style...........................................................................................................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................8
References........................................................................................................................................9

3UBER CASE STUDY AND ANALYSIS
Introduction
The company Uber is regarded as one of the most growing and developing company in
the industry and a dedicated application in android and ios has been developed for the employee
drivers as well as the customers. The app developed for the employee drivers is generally used
by them as a virtual workstation for all day and it also acts as navigating and communication
device for the drivers in order to complete their trips. The Uber is also one of leading application
used in the world and studies have shown that almost 8.5 million hours of logging time are spent
every day on the application by the employee drivers (Madrigal, 2019). The interface of the
application thus should be very much compliant and user friendly to the employees as because
the application is the main tool for them (Burke, 2013). The current application mostly
emphasizes on the needs and requirements of the drivers and thus a new app needs to be
developed. The newly proposed application will be build up from the scratch and the application
aims only to enhance the experience of the drivers. The report emphasizes on the thorough
comparison of the newly developed app with the standard theories of PMBOK.
Discussion
PMBOK areas of knowledge
The PMBOK describes about the nine principles of knowledge which describes the
various practices and knowledge of the project management in the terms of component
processes. However, the different knowledge areas that could have been implemented in order to
develop a new interface for the application are the main topics discussed in this paper (Mesquida
& Mas, 2014).

4UBER CASE STUDY AND ANALYSIS
Scope Management and Integration
The thorough scrutiny of the case study given, it is observed that various development
and implementations plans and upgrades have been carried out by the designers of the
application, however, it could have been better. The chief developing engineer, Haider Sabri, has
kept in mind about reducing the communication gap between the developers and the drivers and
thus has made certain changes and modifications (Madrigal, 2019). The new CEO of the
company, Dara Khosrowshahi, has done a survey and took suggestion from over thousands of
Uber drivers all over the world and minutely looked into the requirements and needs from the
drivers which were eventually linked with the company blueprint modification, which will be
needed in order to modify and successfully execute the project (Hornstein, 2015). The CEO
khosorowshahi, also kept the project management aspects related to the projects in mind and has
briefed some notable factors that can help in the motivation of the drivers as well as the
employees.
Quality management and management of time and cost
The development of the app from the scratch requires a lot of time and money which is
mentioned in this paper. The most important aspect here is the satisfaction of the drivers who
will be using the application and this is kept in mind while developing the new application. The
thorough research of the economic report and statistics of the company Uber, have revealed that
the management team is every much inefficient in terms of managing the costs of the company
(Goetsch & Davis, 2014). The fact of failure of the management team can be depicted from the
billion dollar losses of the company in the year 2016 and 2017, which has about $4.5 and $2.8
respectively. However, the time spent by the company on the quality of their product and
customer satisfaction is to be noted and it is quite remarkable. The community that is developed

5UBER CASE STUDY AND ANALYSIS
by Google in order to keep the record of the feedbacks of the drivers also helps in the
development of the new application as because the needs and requirements of the drivers are
specifically met while developing.
Management of risks
The company Uber has grown in the previous couple of years and by the thorough study
of the case, I can firmly state that the company meets the employee needs and satisfactions.
Several risks are associated with the development and the optimization of the newly developed
application (Cardona, 2013). One of the risks associated is that, the working with such a huge
number of employees and meeting all their needs and requirements is indeed an emerging threat
and several vulnerabilities also exists.
Approach of project management
Several approaches of project management can be depicted in order to resolve this issue
however, no such global approach can be made in such cases. In order to make the approach
effective and beneficial for the company, the following unique approaches can be made in terms
of this project management for the development of the new employee based application.
 Phased approach can be one of the important factors which is the process of overcoming
certain resistances which will resist change in project management plans (Kerzner, 2017).
The phased approach can be categorized into four distinct divisions namely – initiation
phase, maintenance phase, enterprise level installation phase and project level installation
phase.
 Most of the project management approaches is not able to deal or solve the complexities
that are involved within the organization, and thus the iterative approach is followed. The

6UBER CASE STUDY AND ANALYSIS
incorporation of good and agile methodology within the framework of the company can
be incorporated from the iterative approach and that is the reason for selecting the
iterative and incremental approach (Binder, Aillaud & Schilli, 2014). The development of
apps and the companies associated with the development should adopt this approach and
from my side of analysis, this approach should be adopted by the Uber Company.
 The process based approach can be termed as one of the appropriate for Uber as because
in this approach, the project of app development is considered to be a part of our daily
lives and it is perfectly aligned with the goals and objectives of the company. The
approach also helps in the expectation and objective modifications that are observed
during the development phase. ‘The 180 days of challenge’ campaign of Uber gave rise
to many controversies, because of which several modifications have been made by the
new CEO in order to meet with the needs and approaches.
Tools and techniques for risk management
The application that exists in present day provides the Uber drivers to select one route as
per their choice for once per day. ‘The 180 days of challenge’ resulted in the loss of the company
as during that period the drivers were allowed to choose their general direction, six times a day.
This was the reason for the fact that the feature was taken back as the industry suffered a huge
number of losses (McNeil, Frey & Embrechts, 2015). Thus I can state that this was the clear case
of miscalculations in terms of risk factor management. The officials of the company also did not
provide any diplomatic thought to it. The tools and techniques that can be used for the countering
of the risks and vulnerabilities associated with the Uber app development project have been
mentioned in this paper (Modarres, 2016). The tools and techniques that can be used for avoiding
the threats and vulnerabilities of the Uber application is mentioned below –

7UBER CASE STUDY AND ANALYSIS
Tools:
 Decision Tree
 Impact Matrix
 Probability Matrix
The techniques that can be used are as follows:
 Delphi technique
 Assumption analysis
 Interviewing technique
 Brainstorming technique
 SWOT analysis
 Maintenance of risk register
 Analysis of the root cause
Leadership style
Uber being bone of the global leading companies, requires a manager or leader who can
effectively manage the needs and requirements of the employees along with balancing the
economy graph of the company. The whole organization can suffer if any mistake is delivered
from the manager or supervisor’s end. Thus it can be concluded that the new CEO appointed,
Dara Khosrowshahi is a far better leader and manager when compared to the previous CEO
Travis Kalanick. The fact that Khosrowshahi is a better manager can be reflected from the fact
that the sole goal of him is to maintain a harmony and good relationship with the drivers unless
like kalanick who had some behavioural issues with many drivers (Renko et al., 2015). Due to
this, the shareholders of the company forced Kalanick to resign. The main purpose of a leader

8UBER CASE STUDY AND ANALYSIS
should be connecting with all the employees and managing the company by ethical means rather
than just bossing around. Thus after the thorough analysis of the paper, I can firmly say that the
leadership model followed by Khoroswshahi is the democratic leadership model.
Democratic leadership model can be considered as a basic leadership model where the
authorities interact with the lower level of employees and thus a better harmony is maintained in
this model (Giltinane, 2013). Every member of the team in this model can provide potential input
in to the organizations. The most important aspect is that every employee is made proactive in
the company and this helps in better project success.
Conclusion
The above case study has been studied thoroughly, and I have reached the conclusion that
although Khosrowshahi, the new CEO of the company is doing a great job in terms of employee
satisfaction, there is a lot of job to be done within the organizational mainframe in terms of risk
management and also cost and time reduction management. The various techniques and tools
required to develop the management has been mentioned in the report. These will help the
company Uber to avoid losses worth billions of dollar in the future and the company will also be
benefited in terms of employee motivation and satisfaction.

9UBER CASE STUDY AND ANALYSIS
References
Binder, J., Aillaud, L. I., & Schilli, L. (2014). The project management cocktail model: An
approach for balancing agile and ISO 21500. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences,
119, 182-191.
Burke, R. (2013). Project management: planning and control techniques. New Jersey, USA, 26.
Cardona, O. D. (2013). The need for rethinking the concepts of vulnerability and risk from a
holistic perspective: a necessary review and criticism for effective risk management. In
Mapping vulnerability (pp. 56-70). Routledge.
Giltinane, C. L. (2013). Leadership styles and theories. Nursing Standard, 27(41).
Goetsch, D. L., & Davis, S. (2014). Quality management for organizational excellence:
Introduction to total quality.
Hornstein, H. A. (2015). The integration of project management and organizational change
management is now a necessity. International Journal of Project Management, 33(2),
291-298.
Kerzner, H. (2017). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and
controlling. John Wiley & Sons.
Madrigal, A. (2019). 3 Million Uber Drivers Are About to Get a New Boss. Retrieved 27 August
2019, from https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/04/uber-driver-app-
revamp/557117/

10UBER CASE STUDY AND ANALYSIS
McNeil, A. J., Frey, R., & Embrechts, P. (2015). Quantitative Risk Management: Concepts,
Techniques and Tools-revised edition. Princeton university press.
Mesquida, A. L., & Mas, A. (2014). A project management improvement program according to
ISO/IEC 29110 and PMBOK®. Journal of Software: Evolution and Process, 26(9), 846-
854.
Modarres, M. (2016). Risk analysis in engineering: techniques, tools, and trends. CRC press.
Renko, M., El Tarabishy, A., Carsrud, A. L., & Brännback, M. (2015). Understanding and
measuring entrepreneurial leadership style. Journal of Small Business Management,
53(1), 54-74.
Varajão, J., Colomo-Palacios, R., & Silva, H. (2017). ISO 21500: 2012 and PMBoK 5 processes
in information systems project management. Computer Standards & Interfaces, 50, 216-
222.