Project Management at Global Green Books Publishing Global Green Books Publishin
ID: 368279 • Letter: P
Question
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 the third year of operation, Global Green Books started experiencing critical problems. They were:
unable to leverage all the new employees effectively
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 road map 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 Project Manager (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!
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Homework Questions to answer via the Discussion Board:
Comment on the following aspects of the 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 the third year of operation, Global Green Books started experiencing critical problems. They were:
unable to leverage all the new employees effectively
- unable to deliver eBooks to their customers on schedule
- unable to provide quality texts—time and money were being spent fixing defects in their products
- unable to control 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 road map 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 Project Manager (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!
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Homework Questions to answer via the Discussion Board:
Comment on the following aspects of the case study:
- Why did Global Green Books Publishing struggle?
- What were the specific PM solutions that were introduced by Samantha that worked?
- What kind of suggestions would you give to Brad and Jim if you were the PM?
- Are you aware of other similar start-up businesses that struggle in a similar manner? How did they overcome the challenges?
- Global Green Books Publishing is a technology-intensive business, but Samantha is not technically knowledgeable, will she continue to be a successful project manager?I look forward to reading your discussion contribution.
Explanation / Answer
Q1. Global Green Books Publishing initially had a flourishing business because they had a small client list which could easily be handled on an ad-hoc basis without much planning. However, as the clients grew and as the orders started flowing in, timelines became important. This meant proper planning was required, as is the case in any organization. The company lacked this - their earlie rmethod of working without planning had failed. It had to. Lack of a proper delivery timeline, lack of accountability at an individual level and the lack of an overall project plan had contributed to the struggle what the company faced.
Q2. Samantha introduced proven Project Management techniques. Most of them worked. She introduced the following key techniques:
Project Scheduling was introduced by Samantha which helped the team in designing an overall timeframe for the delivery of the project
Budgeting, both in terms of resources and money, which helps in setting the right expectations before starting the project.
Risk Registers: This is very important as any project is bound to have risks. The team should have proper risk mitigation plans, without which the project can become a complete failure
These were some of the key techniques introduced by her which worked well.
Q3. My suggestions would mostly be around Samantha's. I would suggest the creation of a project charter to capture the timelines, the team composition, request for cross functional collaboration if any, and costs of the project. I would also ask for a weekly governance call which would give visibility to the top management on the status of each project running in the company.
Q4. I will leave this one for you. It is a very simple question. You can search for start ups which failed initially but bounced back eventually.
Q5. Yes, she will continue to be a good project manager. The key responsibilities of a project manager include co ordination between all relevant stakeholders so that the communication keeps flowing, tasks that need to be completed get completed, and the project goes as per schedule. The project manager can get technical work done through the members of the technical team who would already be part of the overall project team. Hence, yes, she can be a good project manager even without her technical skills.
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