Assignment 1 Competencies for Project Managers Due Week 6 a.docx

Assignment 1: Competencies for Project Managers
Due Week 6 and worth 175 points
Read the 9 mini-case study series from the Project Management
Institute on the Global Green Books Publishing company before
starting this assignment.
Write a six to eight (6-8) page paper in which you:
Describe at least three challenges that supervisors face as
managers of resources on projects similar to Global Green
Books Publishing. Provide a rationale for your choices.
Identify at least three key skills/competencies supervisors need
to be effective in managing teams’ performance while working
on projects similar to Global Green Books Publishing. Provide a
rationale for your choices.
Describe at least three challenges that team members face when
working on projects similar to Global Green Books Publishing
and provide a rationale for your choices.
Identify at least three skills/competencies that team members
need in order to be effective in working on projects similar to
Global Green Books Publishing and provide a rationale for your
choices.
Use at least three (3) quality resources in this assignment. Note:
Wikipedia and similar websites do not qualify as quality
resources.
Your assignment must:

Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size
12), with one-inch margins on all sides; citations and references
must follow SWS (Strayer Writing Standards). Check with your
professor for any additional instructions.
Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the
student’s name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the
date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in
the required assignment page length.
The specific course learning outcomes associated with this
assignment are:
Assess the elements, processes, and reasons for managing
projects.
Assess and prepare for project uncertainties.
Evaluate processes and tools for monitoring and controlling
project performance.
Click here to view the grading rubric for this assignment.
Mini case 1
Mini-Case Study: Project Management at Global Green Books
Publishing
Global Green Books Publishing was started two years ago by
two friends, Jim King and Brad Mount, who met in college
while studying in Philadelphia, USA. In the new business Jim
focused on editing, sales and marketing while Brad Mount did
the electronic assembly and publishing of books for Global
Green Books. Their business was successful and profitable in

the first two years, largely due to contracts from two big
businesses.
In their third year they got very busy thanks to their third major
customer, a local college that needed customized eBooks. They
hired several part time employees to help them with their
publishing business.
But by the end of third year of operation, Global Green Books
started experiencing c
quality texts—time and money was being spent fixing defects in
rol costs—their business was not
profitable in the third year.
Global Green Books saw a significant rise in issues, a lot of
unpleasant “surprises” were cropping up; business was down as
new resources were hired, also some of the projects were poorly
estimated. The local university was unhappy as their eBook
products reached campus late for use by professors and student.
In some cases, the books were a week or two late. Since the
courses must start on schedule and students need their books at
the beginning of their courses, the new lucrative college
customer was unhappy.
One of the new part-time employees hired by Jim and Brad,
Samantha, had taken a project management course at college.
Samantha was excited about the discipline of project
management and had intentionally selected a job with Global
Green Books Publishing as she saw an opportunity to polish her
project management skills.
One fine day, Jim invited Samantha, for a lunch meeting. He
was aware that Samantha was familiar with project management,
and wanted to hear what she had to say about the problems he

and Brad were facing. Over lunch he questioned why their small
business which had operated and implemented projects so
successfully over the first two years was being challenged
significantly now. He specifically listed the problems they were
facing and asked for input to solve them.
Samantha asked for more time to research all the issues but
noted that Global Green Books, while being innovative,
completed projects without a roadmap or a project plan and
lacked a disciplined approach to project management. She noted
that Jim and Brad did not use any project software for
scheduling and they did not use tools or techniques to estimate,
budget or to communicate with stakeholders. Finally, they had
no processes in place to manage project risks and quality.
Impressed with this and other conversations, Jim King asked
Samantha if she would consider joining them as a project
associate or project manager on a full-time basis to help them
introduce project management practices and help them tide over
their current crisis.
Samantha accepted the offer! She has several key skills—she is
an excellent communicator with very good interpersonal skills
and detail-oriented. Within the first three months in her new
role as PM, she introduced formal project management
processes, created a PM manual and trained the employees to
get the work done well.
Within nine months Samantha had fully turned things around.
Due to proactive risk analysis and risk response planning,
surprises and issues reduced. Communication with stakeholders
was enhanced.
Brad and Jim noted that the company was delivering projects on
schedule, the quality processes worked—and customers were
happy with the products!

Comment on the following aspects of the case study:
a) Why did Global Green Books Publishing struggle? b) What
were the specific PM solutions that were introduced by
Samantha that worked? c) What kind of suggestions would you
give to Brad and Jim if you were the PM? d) Are you aware of
other similar start-up businesses that struggle in a similar
manner? How did they overcome the challenges? e) Global
Green Books Publishing is a technology intensive business, but
Samantha is not technically knowledgeable, will she continue to
be a successful project manager?
MINI CASE 2
Mini-Case Study: The Back to School Crunch at Global Green
Books Publishing
Global Green Books Publishing is a successful printing and
publishing company. Just two years old, it has taken on a great
new customer, a local college that needs customized eBooks.
To deal with this new customer, they have hired several new
part time employees to help them with their publishing
business, some of them students at the college with flexible
hours.
As the new school year drew closer, the orders started coming
in. They had been told how many different printing jobs the
college would need, but they weren’t all arriving at once, and
orders were quite unpredictable in arriving from the professors
at the college. Some professors needed rush orders for their
classes. When Global Green Books finally got the orders, some
of these jobs were much larger than they had thought they
would be.

Printing these orders turned out to be very challenging. Not all
of the new student hires were trained for all of the printing and
binding equipment used to print and assemble to books. Some of
them often made mistakes, some workers called off from work
due to other demands, and there were often not enough people
available to get all the work done before deadlines.
Quality was a serious issue, as they had to provide quality
texts—if there were quality problems with the printed product,
they would have to spend time and money to fixing defects in
their products.
Deliveries started slipping past their requested dates and times.
Global Green Books was unable to deliver eBooks to their
customers on schedule.
The local university was unhappy as their eBook products
reached campus late for use by professors and student. In some
cases, the books were a week or two late.
Samantha had been hired as a project management assistant. In
her new role as a project manager, one of the processes she was
trying to institute was risk management. She started looking at
what was happening in the business, talking about it with the
owners and employees, and heard about the college’s
unhappiness. As she did this, she started identifying risks and
potential risks. As she went along, she started doing more
proactive risk analysis and risk response planning, and as she
did surprises and issues were reduced. By talking with
stakeholders and addressing their concerns, communication with
stakeholders was also enhanced.
a) What risks can you identify? Why are they a risk to Global

Green Books Publishing? b) What kind of impacts does each of
your identified risks have? Can you categorize these as low
impact, medium impact, or high impact? c) How probable are
each of your identified risks? You can think about something
simple like categorizing these as not very likely, likely, and
highly likely to occur. d) What would you advise Global Green
Books are their three most critical risks?
e) What would you suggest that they do about these three risks?
Are there specific actions to deal with these risks? Have you
identified a contingency plan to carry out if the risk occurs?
MINI CASE 3
Mini-Case Study: Defining Standard Projects at Global Green
Books Publishing
Global Green Books Publishing is a successful printing and
publishing company in its third year. It has survived the
bringing on a large new customer and all the challenges of new
work that this customer needed in a very short time.
Much of this work for the college is customized eBooks. As the
first term progressed with Global Green Books making
customized eBooks for this college, there were a number of
issues that affected the quality of the eBooks produced and
caused a great deal of rework for the company. The local
university was unhappy as their eBook products sometimes
reached campus late for use by professors and student. In some
cases, the books were a week or two late.
The management of Global Green Books was also challenged by
these projects. The college expected them delivered on-time and
at a low cost, and the company was not always doing that.
Accounting was having difficult tracking the costs for each of

the books, and the shift supervisor were often having problems
knowing what tasks needed to be completed and assigning the
right employees to each task.
Some of the problems stemmed from the new part time
employees. Since many of these workers had flexible schedules,
it wasn’t always clear which tasks they were supposed to be
working on when they came in to work. Each book being
produced was indeed a book; but that was all they had in
common. Each book had different production steps, different
contents and reprint approvals required, and different layouts
and cover designs. Some were just collections of articles to
reprint once approvals were received, and others required
extensive desktop publishing. Each eBook was a complex
process, but was going to be made just once, as these eBooks
were all customized for each professor and course each
semester. Each eBook had to be produced on time, and had to be
made to match just exactly what the professors requested.
Understanding what each eBook needed had to be clearly
documented and understood before starting production. Global
Green Books had been told by the college how many different
printing jobs the college would need, but they weren’t all
arriving at once, and orders were quite unpredictable in arriving
from the professors at the college. Some professors needed rush
orders for their classes. Some orders arrived as projected, but
some came later than anticipated. When Global Green Books
finally got all their orders, some of these jobs were much larger
than they had thought they would be.
Each eBook needed to have a separate job order prepared that
listed all the steps that needed to be completed, so that tasks
could be assigned to each worker. These job orders were also
becoming a problem. Not all the steps needed were getting
listed in each order. Often the estimates of time for each task
were not completed until after the work was done, causing

problems as workers were supposed to move on to new tasks but
were still finishing their previous tasks. Some tasks required
specialized equipment or skills, sometimes from other groups
within Global Green Books. Not all of the new student hires
were trained for all of the printing and binding equipment used
to print and assemble to books.
Global Green Books wanted to start developing a template for
job orders. This template should list all of the possible tasks
that should be performed in producing an eBook for the college.
These tasks could be broken down into the different phases of
the work.
In the Receive Order phase, the order should be received by
Global Green Books from the professor or the college, it should
be checked and verified, and a job order started. In checking
and verifying each order, the customer representative should
make sure that they have the requester’s name, email and phone
number; the date needed, and a full list of all of the contents.
They should also verify that they have received all of the
materials that were supposed to be included with that order, and
have fully identified all of the items that they need to request
permissions for. Any problems found in checking and verifying
should be resolved by contacting the professor.
In the Plan Order phase, all of the desktop publishing work is
planned, estimated and assigned to production staff. Also all of
the production effort to collate and produce the eBook are
identified, estimated and scheduled, and assigned to production
staff. Specific equipment resource needs are identified and
equipment is reserved on the schedule to support the planned
production effort.
In the Production Phase, permissions are acquired, desktop
publishing tasks (if needed) are performed, content is
converted, and the proof of the eBook is produced. A quality

assistant will check the eBook against the job order and
customer order to make sure it is ready for production, and once
approved by quality, each of the requested eBook formats are
created. A second quality check makes sure that each requested
format is ready to release to the college.
In a Manage Production Phase, happening in parallel with the
Production Phase, a supervisor will track progress, work
assignments, and costs for each eBook. Any problems will be
resolved quickly in an attempt to not have any rework or delays
in releasing the eBooks to the college.
Each eBook will be planned using the standard job template as a
basis for developing a unique plan for that eBook project.
a) Printing books in a print shop, especially large quantities of a
single book, is a process. A process is an ongoing day-to-day
repetitive set of activities the print shop performs when
producing its products. How are these customized eBooks
different from a standard printing process? What characteristics
make these customized eBooks a project? b) Who are the
stakeholders in these eBook projects? How are they involved in
or affected by an eBook project? c) Why is it important to have
a defined project scope? Why is it important to make sure there
is agreement about the scope and what will be done in
producing each eBook? d) What kinds of information would you
want supervisors to have available to them in the Manage
Production phase? Why? e) Do you think developing a standard
job template would be useful for Global Green Books? Why?
What advantages could it give them in planning work? f) What
other information, if any, would you like to see included in the
standard job template? Why?
Create a Work Breakdown Structure for an eBook project. a)

What are the major phases of work for making an eBook? b)
What are the steps in each phase? c) Can you identify any
substeps for any of the steps? What are they?
MINI CASE 4
Mini-Case Study: Cost Estimation at Global Green Books
Publishing
Global Green Books Publishing is continuing to produce
customized eBooks as a key new product line for it as a
successful printing and publishing company. It has developed a
template to help plan job orders. The major customer for these
customized eBooks is a local college, who expected these books
to be delivered at a low cost, and the company has not always
been doing that. The Accounting department in Global Green
Books was having difficult tracking the costs for each of the
books.
Each eBook had a separate job order prepared that listed all the
steps that needed to be completed, so that tasks could be
assigned to each worker and costs estimated. With the existing
job orders, estimates of time required for each task were
sometimes not completed until after the work was done, causing
problems as workers were supposed to move on to new tasks but
were still finishing their previous tasks. Some tasks required
specialized equipment or skills, sometimes from other groups
within Global Green Books.
Along with its template for job orders, Global Green Books
wanted to start developing a project estimate for each new
eBook project. This cost estimate should capture direct costs
and indirect costs. The direct costs for an eBook project include
labor costs for those in the company working on the project,
materials costs (if any), subcontractor or outside labor, and

equipment and facility costs. Material costs for these eBooks
include any permissions costs for content and images used in
the eBook. Indirect costs for these eBooks computer support
costs and sales commissions for each eBook project.
For an incoming eBook order for an eBook for a European
History course, the following internal labor costs are projected
during the Plan Order Phase:
Phase Task Staff Category Rate ($)
Hours
Receive Order Receive Order Customer Service Representative
CSR 12.00 .25 *
Receive Order Check Order Customer Service Representative
CSR 12.00 .50 *
Receive Order Verify Order Customer Service Representative
CSR-1 16.00 1.0 *
Plan Order Plan Work Supervisor Senior-1 28.00 1.0 Plan Order
Assign Work Supervisor Senior-1 28.00 1.0 Plan Order
Estimation Supervisor Senior-1 28.00 1.0 Plan Order Reserve
Equipment Supervisor Senior-1 28.00 .50 Production Acquire
Permissions Publishers Liaison PL 22.00 0 Production Desktop
Publishing (DTP) DTP Specialist DTP-2 18.00 12.5 Production
Content Conversion DTP Specialist DTP-1 12.50 4.0 Production
Produce eBook (Proof and Final) DTP Specialist DTP-2 18.00
5.0 Production Quality Checks Quality Technician Customer
Service Representative QC CSR-1 16.00 16.00 3.0 1.0

Manage Production Track Production Supervisor Senior-1 28.00
3.0
During the Plan Order Phase, the hours for the Receive Order
phase (marked with an *) are actual times, as this work has
already been performed.
In addition to these internal labors costs, the Production
Supervisor has estimated that the European History eBook will
overhead rate on all direct labor of
Equipment costs of $800 for unique equipment needed for this
$500 for installation and training in the use of the oversize map
of 20%
In addition to direct and indirect costs, Global Green Books
targets a 25% profit margin on each project, and budgets for a
10% contingency on labor and 20% contingency on
permissions.
a) What are the types of direct costs identified in this case?
Why are they viewed as direct costs? b) What are two forms of
costs identified? c) What are some problems that might arise
that could impact the budget? d) Why would Global Green
Books set aside contingencies? How would needed rework, if
caught in the quality reviews, be accounted for in the budget? e)
What are the main cost drivers of this project? f) What other
information, if any, would you like to see included in the budget
for this project? Why?
Create a budget for the European History eBook project.

a) What are the costs by major phases of work for making this
European History eBook? b) What are the total costs for direct
labor? c) What is the total estimated cost of this European
History eBook?
MINI CASE 5
Mini-Case Study: Managing Change at Global Green Books
Publishing
Global Green Books Publishing is producing customized eBooks
for a local college. It has just received a large order for a new
eBook on Strategic Human Resource Management in a Global
Context from a senior professor in the business school. This
distinguished faculty member is dissatisfied with the current
textbooks, and wants a customized eBook for use with her
oncampus courses, graduate seminars, and her executive
education courses. This is the most complex eBook that Global
Green Books has undertaken. Because this project is so
important to the professor, and will be used in so many different
settings with different schedules, the professor made sure that
she had her complete eBook request in early to allow sufficient
time for production. She had selected a broad set of the best
papers and had written an introduction and background, along
with discussion questions for each section. This meant that this
project was going to have an extensive set of permissions to
acquire before production could happen, as well as a large
amount of desktop publishing for the new materials written by
the professor. She was quite certain that she had given Global
Green Books more than enough time to have her eBook ready
before the first class needed it.
This large eBook went through the check and verify order step
with a bit of back and forth with the professor to verify the
information needed for the extensive number of permissions, so

that started the project off with a bit of a delay. Because there
were so many permissions, the Supervisor who planned this
project, accelerated the work on obtaining permissions to make
sure that all the permissions were received before they needed
to start assembling and collating the eBook in production.
As the Publishers Liaison worked through the extensive list of
permissions, the Customer Service Representative for the
business school at the college started receiving several inputs
from the college about this project. One set of inputs was a
continuing series of requests from the professor. As new papers
were released, she wanted to make a number of additions to the
eBook. Also, as time went on and she had more time to review
her eBook plans, she started identifying some changes that she
wanted to make to her planned eBook.
Another input came from the business manager at the college
bookstore, as he was quite concerned about the projected cost of
this eBook. Because this eBook included so many reprints of
existing articles and chapters, the estimated cost of the book
was quite high. The college expected their eBooks to be
delivered at a low cost, as its bookstore costs had to cover the
bookstore overhead (servers for sales and distribution of the
eBooks and marketing costs) and the bookstore’s markup, as
well as the costs of the eBook from Global Green Books. The
Global Green Books costs had to incorporate all the permissions
costs, as well as all of the desktop publishing and production
costs.
The Customer Service Representative communicated these
issues to several people within Global Green Books: the account
manager for the college account, the supervisor managing
production for this eBook, the Publishers Liaison obtaining
permissions for this book. The account manager was concerned
about upsetting this important customer, the supervisor didn’t
know how these various requests could all be accommodated or

how it would impact his project, and the Publishers Liaison was
worried both about added costs for new permissions and the
time it would take to get them and the costs they had already
expended for permissions no longer needed.
And the professor’s requests just kept coming, at an increasing
rate as it got closer to her deadline for needing this eBook.
The supervisor was starting to make some estimates of what
$500 for each new permission needed, in addition to the $500
already spent for each permission already acquired that can no
each new permission needed at an unburdened cost of $22 per
hour (loaded cost is $55 with a 1.5 overhead rat
of supervisor time for replanning each change at an unburdened
cost of $28 per hour (loaded cost is $70 with a 1.5 overhead
This continuing series of requests for changes from the
professor is quickly adding to the upwardly spiraling cost of
this project. The supervisor feels that something must be done
about this scope creep – continually changing scope.
a) Who are the stakeholders of this project? Who are the key
stakeholders of the project? b) What impacts could these
requested changes have on the budget? c) Could these requested
changes also impact the schedule? If so, how? d) What is Global
Green Book’s process for dealing with changes from their
customers? Do you see any possible issues with this process? e)
How would you recommend that Global Green Books handle
these changes? Who should be involved? f) What should Global
Green Books do about the conflicting inputs from their

customer – the bookstore manager who wants inexpensive
eBooks and the professor who wants the best and most up-to-
date collection of readings possible for her courses?
MINI CASE 6
Mini-Case Study: Developing Project Managers at Global Green
Books Publishing
Global Green Books Publishing is continuing to grow. They
now have three large customerstwo in traditional print-based
work and the third is a local college. They produce customized
eBooks for this local college. This newest line of work is
growing, as other customers hear of their work, and the account
managers are speaking with several other colleges and
professional associations about taking on additional projects in
electronic publishing.
As they have grown, they have had to start implementing some
project management concepts to plan and manage their work.
The founders hired Samantha as a project associate or project
manager on a full-time basis to help them introduce project
management practices and help them tide over the crisis they
were experiencing with rapid growth. Within the first three
months in her new role as PM, she introduced formal project
management processes, created a PM manual and trained the
employees to get the work done well. Within a year, the
company was delivering projects on schedule, the quality
processes worked—and customers were happy with the
products! This success was leading to possible new work and
greater opportunities to bring on new customers.
As the growth continued, Samantha was now feeling the
pressure. She was only one person. And there was so much more
to still do.

Using her project management skills, she had implemented more
formal project management processes, created a PM manual and
trained the employees to get the work done well. One area
where she especially felt stretched thin was in supporting the
supervisors.
As the eBook business grew, there were more and more
demands on the supervisors. Many were great print technicians
who had caught the eye of the founders for their attitudes and
customer service ethic. But today, they were being called on to
do more complex tasks than merely running a highly automated
print copier. Supervisors are interacting with customers, as well
as with internal account managers and customer service
representatives. They are managing employees with a diverse
set of skills, backgrounds, and motivations. It is increasingly
hard for them to ask employees to take on hard challenges when
they themselves do not have those skills and have not done the
eBook publishing that the business is increasingly moving to.
Many of the supervisors have had a bit of project management
mentoring from Samantha, but still know that they have to be
both leaders and managers. As project teams come together to
work on eBooks, there are challenges. Some of the challenges
have to do with knowing the status of the work, as part-time
employees come in and hand a piece of a project off to another
worker. Some deal managing conflicts as they arise – both
technical issues as permissions are delayed and content cannot
yet be incorporated, leading to scheduling changes, and
interpersonal issues among staff. Some of these conflicts occur
between a mostly young, part-time contingent of student
workers and the full-time employees. Supervisors are often
drawn into mediating or resolving these conflicts. They really
need to meld together their staff to create highly capable,
productive project teams for these fast-paced eBook projects.
The staff needs to

trust each other and their leadership to be fair and to balance
work priorities with the times that they are available.
Supervisors need to provide leadership, to provide inspiration
for their team, and to be good motivators of their team
members, as well as be a good manager, worrying about the
day-today and minute-by-minute accomplishment of the
project’s goals. Being a good motivator also means that the
supervisors must be good listeners to understand what issues are
confronting their team members and the needs of their team
members.
The supervisors were realizing that as a group they needed two
things. One was a greater grasp of people skills, or so-called
“soft” skills, to help make them more effective. The other was
more support in project management as they needed to better
track the details of the work, and the task level scheduling and
rescheduling that was happening as team members come and go
for their work shifts and as permissions sometimes take longer
to obtain than planned.
Samantha is starting to discuss with her management and with
the human resources and training group how they can meet some
of these needs. Perhaps some leadership development training
for supervisors could be arranged. And she is talking with her
management about setting up a project management office
(PMO) to have project management staff available to help the
supervisors with some of their work tracking and scheduling
challenges. She hopes that addressing these two issues will
make their eBook delivery much smoother.
a) What are some of the challenges facing supervisors? b) What
skills do you think the supervisors need to be effective project

managers? Why do they need these skills? c) Are there skills
that team members need to be effective team members in a
project? If so, what are these skills? d) Which characteristic or
skill do you think is the most significant characteristic of an
effective project manager? e) What steps could project
managers take to help make their teams more effective? f) What
advice would you give Samantha about setting up a project
management office? What roles could these staff perform, and
how could they interact with the existing projects? g) Can you
describe other ways that this PMO function could be
organized?
MINI CASE 7
Mini-Case Study: Closing Projects at Global Green Books
Publishing
Global Green Books Publishing is continuing to grow. The
customized eBooks line of work is continuing to grow, and they
now have a lot of experience from the eBook projects that they
have completed for their first eBook customer, a local college,
and for their newer customers.
However, as new projects come in and start to run into
problems, some of the project managers in the project
management office and their manager, Samantha, were
discussing how it seems like it is déjà vu all over again – some
of the same problems that they thought they had solved in
working with supervisors and their teams on past projects keep
on occurring.
The eBook projects are functioning well, and customers are
happy with the results. Repeat orders are coming in and new
customers are turning to Global Green Books for their eBook
production needs.

But, there are just some problems that seem to keep popping up.
One of the project managers even described dealing with these
problems as being like playing the popular arcade game of
“Whack-a-Mole” - as soon as you deal with one to make it
disappear, the same one or another one just pops up. It seems
like a never-ending struggle to try and solve some of these
problems, especially when some seem like they were already
solved on another earlier project.
In the PM handbook that Samantha had implemented, when
projects completed the supervisors finished tracking all of the
actual effort and costs and turned that information over to cost
accounting for billing purposes. As Samantha and colleagues
implemented the project management office, they modified the
PM manual to have a copy of this information also shared with
the project management office. They have found this
information to be sometimes useful as historical data to help
develop estimates for new projects as requests for new eBooks
come in from their customers.
The PMO team was discussing making changes to the PM
manual and holding a short training for supervisors to
implement some improvements to their project completion
processes. They wanted to change their standard job template to
elebration for the team to
mark the end of the project,
They felt that it was important that the PMO start capturing
lessons learned. These could be collated by the supervisors at
the end of the project, or they could encourage supervisors to
plan, schedule and hold a project closing meeting with their
team members to thank the team members and to collect lessons
learned from all of the team. They could also invite feedback or

participation from the relevant Customer Service
Representatives and account managers.
The PMO received management approval for these changes,
updated the PM manual, and held a brief training for
supervisors. Supervisors liked the ideas, especially because the
close-out meeting or team celebration would give them a chance
to recognize and reward team members and would serve to
motivate the teams for future projects. As time went on, the
PMO started collecting these lessons learned from many
projects.
As they collected these lessons learned from these projects, the
PMO staff started to look at the data from the lessons learned
across the projects. They examined frequency of the six kinds of
issues that were being encountered on the projects. The
histogram below shows their results.
Based on feedback from the leadership training that they had
done with the supervisors, they had thought that the major cause
of delays and extra costs on projects were part-time student
employees calling off from work at the last minute, leaving
planned work not performed until another resource could be
assigned to it, which was often difficult as there were few slack
resources. This made tasks late and sometimes delayed projects
from completing on time.
Their analysis showed that that wasn’t the case at all. In fact
only three of the problems on projects were caused by
unplanned absences. In their Pareto analysis, the PMO staff
identified three key problems, which they highlighted in red.
Delays in obtaining necessary reprint permissions from certain
publishers were the largest cause of problems, accounting for
34% of the problems encountered by eBook projects. Production
staff calling in sick was the next most frequent problem,
accounting for 28% of the problems. Customer changes, which

often caused rework and delays, were the root cause of another
20% of the problems.
The PMO now knew what the most important issues were that
were causing eBook projects to be delayed, and could make
recommendations to mitigate each of these problems.
a) What are some of the reasons why it is important to close out
a project? What can project managers accomplish in closing out
a project? b) Why should projects capture lessons learned?
What are some ways that the project team members, project
managers and the organization can use lessons learned? c) What
benefits come from celebrating project accomplishments? Do
you believe that rewards and recognition can serve as
motivators for staff? d) Explain what a Pareto chart is. Why
would you use this technique to identify and prioritize problem
areas? Are there some limitations on interpreting the results of a
Pareto analysis? e) If you were the PMO looking at this Pareto
analysis, what recommendations might you make to address the
three key problem areas in eBook projects that this analysis
identified?
MINI CASE 8
Mini-Case Study: Team Building at Global Green Books
Publishing
Global Green Books Publishing is continuing to grow. As their
eBook business continues to drive that growth, they now are
continuing to add staff to be able to keep up with customer
demand. Most all of the new people and many of the eBook
staff have not worked together in the original print-based
business area of the company, and indeed are new to the

company and its culture.
These new employees have a diverse set of skills, backgrounds,
and motivations. Their supervisors know how to manage their
projects, but do not always have the expertise to step in and do
each of the unique tasks assigned to team members. Most of the
employees that have been around since the beginning of the
eBook business have been trained in their project management
techniques, so they can get the work done well; but not all of
the newer employees have had this training. There is just too
much work that needs to be done to take time out for training.
Supervisors need provide leadership, to provide inspiration for
their team and to be good motivators of their team members, as
well as be a good manager, worrying about the day-today and
minute-by-minute accomplishment of the project’s goals. Being
a good motivator also means that the supervisors must be good
listeners to understand what issues are confronting their team
members and the needs of their team members.
Beyond this role as leaders, supervisors need to be a good
manager. They need to identify the skills that they need for
their projects. Supervisors at Global Green Books normally do
this as they start from the standard job template for eBook
projects and build the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) for
their eBook project. Next, they need to identify team members
that have those skills, and work with their current project
managers and with human resources to make sure that they will
be available to support the new project. Based on the lessons
learned analyses, a supervisor might also identify a person as a
back-up for a critical role on the project, in case they run into
difficulties or assigned staff are not available as planned.
Once the team is assembled, challenges can arise. Some of the
challenges teams face have to do with knowing the status of the
work, as part-time employees come in and hand a piece of a

project off to another worker. Some deal managing conflicts as
they arise – both technical issues as permissions are delayed
and content cannot yet be incorporated, leading to scheduling
changes, and inter-personal issues among staff. Some of these
conflicts occur between a mostly young, part-time contingent of
student workers and the full-time employees. Supervisors are
often drawn into mediating or resolving these conflicts. They
really need to meld together their staff to create highly capable,
productive project teams for these fast-paced eBook projects.
The staff needs to trust each other and their leadership to be fair
and to balance work priorities with the times that they are
available.
Supervisors are finding it is very important to make sure every
team member understands the goals of the project, the roles of
each team member and how they inter-relate, and the sense of
urgency about completing the project. This urgency comes from
understanding the intense schedules for completing eBooks and
from understanding why it is important that all of the work
come together to create a finished eBook – any part not
completed keeps the final eBook from
going into quality check and release. Because of the issues
around employee absence and the use of part-time employees,
they are also trying to make sure that employees are able to do
their role, but can also help out in related roles as needed.
To help build a common understanding of the project work and
minimize some of the conflicts, Samantha is working with some
the supervisors to hold a project kick-off meeting where the
team reviews the goals and plan for the project, and develops
and agrees to a project team charter. Letting the team develop
their charter gives the supervisor an opportunity to observe how
the team works together, and gives the team the ability to set
ground rules for how they will work together. The team charter
starts with the project goals. The team may set their goals in

order to accomplish these project goals. Other topics that the
team might address in their team charter include agreed-upon
guidelines for how they want to participate in the project,
conduct (or behavior), communications among project members,
communicating status and problems, problem solving, and
holding meetings. This charter and its guidelines that they team
have agreed to can then serve as a basis for team building and
team behaviors during the project.
a) What are some of the challenges facing project teams? Have
you encountered any of these problems in teams that you have
been part of? What other team problems have you experienced?
b) Are there skills that team members need to be effective team
members in a project? If so, what are these skills? c) Why is it
important that team members understand the goals and scope of
the project? d) Think about creating a team charter. What
categories of guidelines would you you’re your team to agree on
before beginning work? Why would you include these
categories? e) Brainstorm and identify some guidelines that you
co
Holding meetings f) What are the advantages of a kick-off
meeting? What are the advantages of developing a team
charter?
MINI CASE 9
Mini-Case Study: Quality Management at Global Green Books
Publishing
Global Green Books Publishing is growing its eBook business,

satisfying demand for customized eBooks for the college market
and for a growing number of commercial customers. These
customers expect a high-quality product that works in each of
the environments that there users use – various operating
systems, eBook readers, and hardware (desktop computers,
tablets/phablets, and smartphones).
As part of the standard development process, each eBook goes
through several quality checks. When the order is received, a
customer service representative checks the order and a more
senior customer service representative verifies the order. During
the Production Phase, a quality assistant will check the eBook
against the job order and customer order to make sure it is ready
for production, and once approved by quality, each of the
requested eBook formats are created. A second quality check is
performed by the customer service representative who is
assigned to the customer to make sure that each requested
format is ready to release to the customer.
Some customers (and their eBook users) are complaining about
quality problems in the eBooks they have received from Global
Green Books. Sometimes the eBooks do not work correctly in
the intended environment. Sometimes, content is not clear or
fuzzy. Sometimes, a quality check will find that not all parts of
the requested order have been included in the eBook. This
causes rework before the eBook can come back for a second
quality check before being released to the customer service
representative for the final quality check. In each of these cases,
the "cost of quality" is the cost of NOT creating a quality
product. Every time the project has to rework an eBook to
correct a quality defect, the cost of quality increases.
Samantha and her project managers met with a key group of
supervisors who are managing a critical number of the eBook
projects. They reviewed the lessons learned data and
brainstormed from their experiences with producing eBooks to

identify some of the quality problems that they were seeing in
customer’s quality requirements are never discussed within the
project team. They are dealt with by the customer service
representatives at the beginning and end of the eBook
production process. This means that team members do not know
what the customer expects and just do the tasks assigned
without knowing what is “good”. They may have a very
different or no understanding of what the customer’s quality
standard job template doesn’t suggest that supervisors plan into
their project any reviews or checkpoints at which quality can be
verified. The only quality checks come after the eBook is
finished. This does quality checks of the whole eBook, but
doesn’t allow for checks on each component –content formats,
factors lead to a perception among team members that quality is
just simply some testing by some other groups (quality and
customer service), rather than a way of working and reviewing
or checking work as they proceed. Further, many team members
don’t even see quality as their responsibility, because it’s
something done by someone else.
representatives is that they do test each eBook, but they cannot
always check each eBook in an environment that is the same as
that used by the end users of the eBook. Sometimes users have
different equipment than the customer service representatives
have to use for their testing. There are times when this causes
surprises after the eBook is released. This leads to external
failure costs for dealing with processing customer complaints,
dealing with rework to fix the eBooks, and releasing a revised
eBook. Luckily the customers handle distribution to their users,
so Global Green Books is not bearing the cost of customer
returns and warranty claims that they might have if they were
selling a consumer product directly to consumers.

The group agrees that they would like to make some changes to
bring their total quality costs below the costs of quality that
they are currently incurring. This means that they want to
reduce the costs of failing to meet customer requirements or
expectations, and reinvest those savings into preventing
problems as they go that do not meet the customer’s
requirements, and checking to make sure that the eBook and all
of its components conform to the customer’s requirements.
Catching some of the quality problems sooner, before the entire
eBook is produced will also reduce the internal failure costs
that they are experiencing. These internal failure costs are
rework and re-checking following the quality checks by Quality
and the customer service representative.
a) Consider the problems that Samantha and the group
identified. What do you think are the causes of these problems?
b) What would you suggest they do differently to eliminate
these problems? c) Who should be responsible for quality? What
would you recommend be the specific responsibilities of each
identified role? d) What prevention activities would you suggest
to prevent poor quality in the eBook products? Examples could
be planning for quality activities or team building activities
focused on improving quality e) What appraisal activities would
you suggest to evaluate the eBook product to ensure that it
meets quality standards and customer requirements? Should
they add in-process checks of eBook components in addition to
their current final inspection/tests? If so, who should do these?
f) What would you suggest they do to involve team members
more in pursuit of high quality eBooks for their customers?

Assignment 1 Competencies for Project Managers Due Week 6 a.docx

Assignment 1 Competencies for Project Managers Due Week 6 a.docx

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