BUS 528/ 520 Project Management/ Organization Behavior - Final Group Project

California University of Management and Technology (CALMAT) MBA

BUS 528 Project Management

BUS 520 Organization Behavior

Final Group Project

Prepared by Pei Jung Chiang (Cherri), Jianqiang Huang (Jenny) and Edmond Low

BUS528/ 520_Project Management_Organization Behavior_Project_presentation_2010_jce_rev_16

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BUS 528 Week 10 Assignment A-2

Assignment A-2
Chapter 11 ideas- Communication

Those days, sending smoke signal used to be the form of communication for native.

These days, communication is so critical as it is one of the top reason of project failure. We do not want to send our project to smoke for sure.

Therefore, effective communication is the vital tool for project managers. Project managers need to ensure two way close loop communication and ensure the message is clear and direct to the audience. They also need to listen to the team and engage with the stakeholders.

Project checklist is essential tool to define the objective, responsibility, task assignment and the status of the task or activity. It provides better control for the project manager.


Meeting is an important forum to engage the team together. Meeting schedule and meeting minutes are critical to pull the team together and to ensure the team member deliver according to the action item as per discussion during the meeting.

Defining the meeting outcome & stakeholders is important before calling for a meeting. This can help to avoid wasting team member's time and resources.

Project Manager are suppose to prepare the Meeting agenda that will serve as a guideline to achieve the meeting objective and on time meeting schedule.

Recording or documenting the project process, procedure, design and others changes are critical to keep information accurate and up to date. We do not want to waste time & resources in using out dated information. Translate to waste of $. Therefore, pay attention on documentation and change management.
Another valuable form of communication is Project monitoring system or Dashboard. It will help to provide the health of the project and picture tells it all. Stakeholders can refer to the Dashboard and react to it. This reporting can help to improve performance and also the project deliverable.

The following communication tool is important - Issue Tracker. It will be great if the project manager can emphasize the power of this tool to track the issues and lesson learn. This knowledge library will help to record the issues or problems encounter. Team member will respond to this tool on the action taken and also to share the solution.


Again, i would like to stress the importance of Closed-loop Communication that serves as a control system with an active feedback loop. This method is highly recommended to all project manager.

BUS 528 Week 10 Assignment A-1

Assignment A-1

Chapter 10 ideas- Building a High Performance Project Team

Synergy - is the only word that i can describe about this Chapter that will help to cultivate a high competent & performance team.

What is Synergy?

- defined as two or more agents working together to produce a result not obtainable by any of the agents independently.

For example:

Adam alone is too short to reach an apple on a tree and Bob is too short as well. But if Bob sits on the shoulders of Adam or vice versa, they will be tall enough to reach the apple. Therefore, their synergy (teamwork) enable them to pluck the apple.

Another example:

If you assign Mick to draw a house by providing him a pen and a paper. Below may likely be the result.

House drawing by Mick with a pen and paper

If you assign Mick to draw a ' dream house'. This time :

• you provide him not only a piece of paper and pen, but also colouring tools, ruler, eraser and etc.
• You also send Mick to Autocad Training.
• You create a team of expert (teammates) to help Mick by providing idea of adding swimming pool, draw in 3D, big houses with windows, staircases, big garden etc.
• At the same time, the team will support and guide Mick from behind by motivating and encouraging him.
• Below drawing may likely be the results of the synergy.

House drawn by Mick with provision of tools/ resources/ team support

Performance Synergy is the effective use of material and human resources to make great things happen to meet the mission, vision, goals and values of the team and organization.

It require everything and everyone to be in “sync” - The right people, the right corporate culture/ idea and the right skill set/ framework as illustrated below.

Some interesting fact about synergy - by Lao Tzu. He was one of the greatest philosopher of China, or of the world.
He emphasizes the teaching of Synergy that incorporate with the human and nature elements.

One of his teaching example:
4 continuous steps of Life-Business Synergy:

1. Discover your higher self, mission and passion
2. Define your vision and goals
3. Design your wheel of life or business model or framework.
4. Make a difference, do what you love and satisfy doing, keep going and learning.

BUS 528 Week 8 Assignment A-3

Assignment A-3
Chapter 9 ideas- Balancing the Project.

Balancing a project means comparison of efficiency vs productivity.

(Input) Efficiency vs Productivity (Output)

Amount of effort vs How much / how often

Learning how to manage both efficiency and productivity, and the difference between them, will help to define the success of your project.

Efficiency
Projects rely upon efficiency models to calculate areas in which costs can be reduce and improve production/ resources/ skills. Efficiency is only a guide, however, and needs to be considered alongside another system of calculating processes.

Productivity
Productivity also calculates how resources are controlled and converted into useful end product or results, but in this model allow concentration of the details of the quality. It will provide an analysis of the relationships between input and output. Productivity will calculate how resources are used in direct relation to the purpose of the company.
In summary, balancing between efficiency and productivity allow us to re-evaluate the project for effective deliverable. You will be able to balance the cost, schedule and quality of the product or end result.

Balancing also requires thought, strategy, innovation and honesty.

BUS 528 Week 8 Assignment A-2

Assignment A-2
Chapter 8 ideas- The Dynamics of Accurate Estimating

When estimating, it is important that our estimation be as accurate as possible. However, no matter how well we can make the estimate, there is always some uncertainty.
There's alot of method thought to improve estimating technique.

One of the biggest factor to improve estimation accuracy is 'Time' (see below chart). Time (experience) helps to buy a more detailed and accurate estimation.

Time allows you to gather more data/ informations. Using data and lessons learned from previous projects is certainly a good place to start. Therefore, Analogy or Paramedtric (re-use) method is beneficial to consider the similarities between a previous projects and the new project being estimated. This provides opportunity to study the feasibility of reusing existing set up from a similar

project.

This form of re-use makes cost estimation & project time line estimation much easier and precision in accuracy.

Gathering more data/ informations for better accuracy of estimation not only required time as stated above. The following human factor is very important to bring the whole team to provide a near to perfect estimation of accuracy in a project that is 'Communication'.

Communication is the most effective tool, key to the success of the project and to delivering on all aspects of a project with the common end goals of hitting the bull eyes precise accuracy of estimation.

BUS 528 Week 8 Assignment A-1

Assignment A-1
Chapter 7 ideas- Realistic Scheduling.

We learnt about Gantt chart and CPM (Critical Path Method) during last semester in the class of BUS600 - Foundation of Business Management and you can take a look at the CPM and Gantt Chart example posted in the following link:
http://lowedmond.blogspot.com/2010/04/bus-600-week-8-assignment-1.html

In my opinion, to ensure a project success with a realistic scheduling, we need 'Status Checklist' to capture not only all the details that we identify in WBS but also:

1. Responsible by who?
2. the status/ progress (with colour coding - Done (green), yellow (in process) and red (problem)
3. ECD - expected commit date
4. Comments

Refer below example:

With the checklist for each phases of the project, you can then chart the project schedule summary using the Gantt method as shown below:

You can also identify the 'Critical Path' and also layout out the 'Action Plan' to meet the schedule plan.

A great schedule plan can bring multiple benefits to the project/ company:

• Effective process change
• Reduce cost/ inventory
• Shorten cycle time
• Increased efficiency
• Labor resources leveling
• Accurate delivery date - satisfy & happy customer
• Real time information (status update)

BUS 528 Week 6 Assignment A-2

Assignment A-2
Chapter 6 ideas- Work Breakdown Structure

The first time that I ever exposed to the word WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) was back during my college days in the early twenty hundreds.

We were taught about WBS in Engineering Management course and we use it in one of our project – 'Development of Multi-functional System in Poultry Farm – iFarm'.

This WBS helps us to breakdown each of the division or segment that we need to deliver and expect in a structure manner. We can also plan the approach/ timeline/ responsibility accordingly.

So, a brief summary of what is iFarm:

• an automated and multi-functional system that will cover the operation and maintenance of a poultry farm which will be controlled by a microcontroller.
• This project is aim to reduce workforce, increase productivity, low budget with advance technology equipment.

Above is the brochure of the iFarm project.

Right now, referring back to the project that I did with the team, I feel regret as we didn’t patent the name iFarm (almost similar to iPhone, iPad, iPod nowadays)…no point complaining...we missed the flight...hahahaha

Anyway, below is just to share part of my early days course work during my college days without much working experience. Special thanks to my old project team mates – Michael and Desmond.

Work Breakdown Structure for the Development of Multi-functional System in Poultry Farm - iFarm

A. Do Project Research

A.1 Identify Needs for Project

A.1.1 Project Objectives

A.1.2 Project Plan

A.2 Outcome Expectations

B. Develop Planning Proposal

B.1 Proposed Scheme Layout

B.1.1 feasibility assessment

B.1.2 mapping

B.2 Phases of Development

B.2.1 Schedule

C. Detailed Design Works

C.1 Software Design

C.1.1 Software architecture overview

C.1.2 Software integration

C.2 Hardware and Circuitry Design

C.2.1 Power supply

C.2.2 Main board

C.3 Interface Design

D. Implementations of Project

D.1 Installation

D.2 Testing and Debugging

D.2.1 UAT process

BUS 528 Week 6 Assignment A-1

Assignment A-1
Chapter 5 ideas- Risk Management

Earlier of the semester, we were ask to comment why Project Management is important and what is our expectation for this course of study.

This assignment on Chapter 5 – Risk Management further meet my expectation that touched on Murphy’s law topic that I mentioned in my first week Assignment blog for this subject BUS 528.
http://lowedmond.blogspot.com/2010/06/bus-528-week-1-assignment.html

Let’s find out who is Murphy and why he have his own law from this link:
http://www.murphys-laws.com/murphy/murphy-true.html

Basically – the main point is “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong”.

These are few of the exposure, tool or knowledge I learn through out the years that very much relates to Risk Management from identifying/ forecasting the issues --> Develop mitigation plan --> Establish contingency --> Close loop risk management

• FMEA – Failure Mode and Effect analysis
• Reliability Analysis
• Fishbone diagrams
• Bowtie diagrams
• 6 sigma

The advantages of managing risk will lead to;

• Good company image and competitiveness
• Improve quality, reliability and safety of a product/process
• Customer satisfaction
• Reduce system development time and cost
• Reduce future failures, capture engineering knowledge
• Preventing problem
• Prosper teamwork and idea exchange between functional team

BUS 528 Week 3 Assignment A-2

Assignment A-2
Chapter 4 ideas- Making the Rules

The #1 Reason for Project Failure is "Communications Breakdown".


Therefore, creating the written documented Communication Plan is important to bring the stakeholders/ team together and in sync.

Following are the Communication Plan key elements:
1. A brief background for the communication plan
2. Stakeholder Analysis
3. Clearly stated objectives
4. The strategy for going about communicating
5. Potential issues and risks
6. The budget

The following are the steps to develop a great communication plan:
1. Conduct a research-communication audit.
2. Define project objectives.
3. Define project audiences/ team member/ stakeholders
4. Define goals.
5. Identify tools.
6. Establish a timetable
7. Evaluate the result.

BUS 528 Week 3 Assignment A-1

Assignment A-1
Chapter 3 ideas - Project Stakeholders.

Project consist of stakeholders - person involved in project. Most of the team, it's a group or team effort. Therefore it's important to pay attention on the Stakeholders relationship management to help:

1. Increase the success rate of the project.
2. Provide some cushion to weather the inevitable storms that occur on every project.
3. Provide an environment which is personally satisfying
4. Reducing project cycle time by keeping it from being bogged down in politics.
5. Streamlining the approval process.
6. Helping to ensure that project resources are available and remain focused.
7. Keeping information flowing.

4 steps involved in stakeholder managment :
1. Identify our project stakeholders
2. Collect and Analyze information about the stakeholders
3. Use that analysis to develop relationship strategies
4. Manage the ongoing relationships with the stakeholder

Responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed (RACI) is a great tool to identify the key stakeholders by level of project involvement and responsibility. These stakeholders are defined as follows:
1. Responsible - person is responsible for completing a task.
2. Accountable - person will be called to account if the task is not completed and may manage the person who is responsible for completing the task.
3. Consulted - person that consulted about aspects of the task (advisor)
4. Informed - The holder of this passive role is kept informed only.

BUS 528 Week 2 Assignment A-2

Assignment A-2
Chapter 2 ideas- The Project Environment

Above is a typical product lifecycle and adoption curves.

I would like to use the volume, cost, sales, and profit as the stages difference that include:

1. Introduction - costs are high and sales volume is low.
2. Growth - sales volumes increase significantly and profitability begins.
3. Maturation - sales volumes reach their peak and profits flatten.
4. Decline - sales volumes decline and profitability diminishes

Depending on the conditions surrounding a product, its life cycle may last months or decades. Adoption rates vary depending on such things as:

1. recognized advantages,
2. price and operational costs,
3. substitutes,
4. promotional marketing efforts,
5. risk.

Now why is Product Development Life Cycle important?

1. helps to open new markets
2. expand sales of current product categories
3. reposition a company or organization.
4. improve profitability.

Product development efforts will bring fruitful return to expand their market presence and allow for more selling opportunities.

BUS 528 Week 2 Assignment A-1

Assignment A-1

Chapter 1 ideas- Project Management in A changing world.

'2E'- efficiency and effectiveness is by far the key discipline for project management. I was exposed to Robert Cooper - Stage Gate process that emphasizes the 2E. It's my first approach on the originator of this idea on New Product Development that i experienced for years. It caught my attention and i decided to do more reading on Stage Gate.

The Stage-Gate process is a detailed and careful designed business process to understand what discriminates product success and failure. It is the world’s most widely implemented and trusted product innovation process.

The process is a conceptual and operational roadmap for moving a new product project from idea to market launch.
It gives us the idea to divide the effort into stages separated by management decision gates. Cross-functional teams must successfully complete a prescribed set of related cross-functional tasks in each stage prior to obtaining management approval to proceed to the next stage of product development.

The entrance of each stage is called as Gates. To pass the gates, these are the criteria:

1. Quality Control
2. Readiness Check - ok or not?
3. Marker for action plan for next stage.

The Stages in the model process are:

1. Scoping
2. Build the Business Case
3. Development
4. Testing and validation
5. Launch

The benefits of Stage-Gate:

1. Well Organized innovation
2. provide competitive advantage
3. Accelerate product development with the product life cycle study.
4. Increase success chance of new products.
5. Helps to guid ethe project to the right path or objective.
6. Provides overview and outlook
7. Cross functional
8. Can be combine with others performance metrics - net present value.

BUS 528 Week 1 Assignment B & C

Assignment B

Project Description

CMC Project.
Caketail Music Café (CMC) is a start-up bakery and coffee retail plan to establish in Palo Alto, California. We will refer "CMC" as the project. CMC expects to catch the interest of regular loyal customer base with its broad variety of coffee and pastry products. The company plans to build a strong market position in the city, due to the partners' experience and mild competitive climate in the area

CMC aims to offer its products at a moderate price to meet the demand of the middle-to higher-income local market area residents and college/ university students.
CMC will also introduce the ‘Sports and Music’ elements as the connection between human. These two elements allow human to get together, express themselves and improve social interaction.

CMC is equally owned and managed by its two partners

Miss Cherri Chiang has extensive experience in bakery & beverage, sales and marketing. She has 5 years of experience in food industry (Restaurant/ Bakery & beverage) in Europe, US and Taiwan.

Mr. Edmond Low brings experience in the area of operation, management and administration with 8 years of experience in food industry (Bakery/ Banquet/ fast food chain) in US, Malaysia, Australia and Thailand.

CMC offers a broad range of coffee and espresso products, all from high quality Brazil grown imported coffee beans by providing each customer coffee and espresso products made to suit the customer, down to the smallest detail. CMC also offer others non-caffeine/ alchoholic beverage products.

The bakery will provides freshly prepared bakery and pastry products at all times. CMC will be introducing the main and new product of “Caketail” that expect to be the all time favorite for it consumer

Vision
CMC will be the hub of entertainment for 58,598 Palo Alto populations. It will soon attract customers around Bay area (with approximately 7.4 million people).

Mission
CMC aims to offer high quality coffee, espresso, and pastry products at a competitive price.

CMC will create an atmosphere conducive to creative expression and promote the creative process.

CMC is the inspiration of the current social life around the world especially those that live in the urban metropolitan life. People will get together with their friends and families to watch a game or to listen to music. CMC will also be the focal point for businessman to meet up and create business opportunity for Palo Alto city.

Goals
Our primary goals of this CMC project over the 1st year are:
1. Secure financing for start-up of at least $100,000 for space and equipment.
2. Locate the strategic space in Palo Alto.
3. Acquire equipment necessary for business, i.e. coffee pots, cappuccino machines, blenders, etc.
4. Make agreement with Brazil coffee distributors, and bakery vendors.
5. Create a cozy, artist friendly environment that suits CMC concept(i.e. choice of colors, choice of music, decor)
6. Open for business and aims to be listed among the top 10 hub of entertainment in Palo Alto by first half year of operation (within 6 months)
7. Break even by the fourth month of its operation as it steadily increases and a chieve sales of $ 1.04 Million in Year 1.

Assignment B

CMC SMART goals analysis
With the Vision, Mission and goals statement above, it is crystal clear that CMC defined the specific plan to success with the aim to be the hub of entertainment and high quality products offered as we understand the business needs and nature well with all the market segmentation and analysis done.

We have also clearly stated the primary goal is to secure the start up cost for space and equipment purchasing.

Also, CMC target sales of ~$1 million by end of Year 1 of operation with expected break even by 4th month of operation is measurable.

CMC partnership of Cherri Chiang and Edmond Low co-operate and agree to set the following humble yet realistic goals with their background of MBA knowledge and experience in food industry globally.

With the network established, we will be able to secure high quality raw material and supplies to support the business needs.

A year of prep and timeframe is reasonable for CMC to establish themselves as one of the most frequent café and entertainment spot in Palo Alto.

BUS 528 Week 1 Assignment A

Assignment A


Who am i? Why Project Management and expectation?


In reference to my Introduction (click for more information), I involves alot in engineering management field. My job requires me to deal with alot of different departments internally and in matrix form. We also need to frequently contact global counterparts that involves in certain project for enhancement and improvement to the organization.

Therefore, i have full interest in this class or BUS 528 Project Management offered by CALMAT MBA course that will sharpen my "saw" as my tools to success in my career pathing.

What do i expect to learn or obtained from this course? I hope to further understand and dig into project introduction and understanding as my baseline. Alot of time, people do not really understand the need of a project or why project is important or whether or not they are required or part of the project? And of course, this related to effectiveness of the communication of the project defination and what's the impact/ benefit of the project to the business/ organization.

Of course, the timeline or the process of the project structure is important - CPM/ Gantt chart related tools play a major role in project planning and also are able to guide the project and solve problem and issue related.

Project budget is another element that i want to gain form this course as i need to polish up this skill.

I would also likes to reference Murphy's law and also 7 habits of highly effective ppl studies into project management that will surely bring benefits to me.

Lastly, i hope this course can also touch on globalization subject.