Name: Course: Lecturer: Date: Blue Spider Case Study Gary was given the enticing opportunity to head the blue spider project because of his R&D background. However, things did not turn out well for him and the entire project because he lacked the necessary skills and experience to head such a project. Project management is a very intricate responsibility and requires advanced knowledge coupled with profound experience in the area. Having an exceptional technical background by itself will not make an efficient project manager. There were several areas and decisions where Gary committed some errors for the whole project to be hit by problems. The issues involved were a mixture of lack of skills and experience, misaligned goals among others. One of the areas where Gary committed an error was in focusing too much on R&D work or administrative works at the expense of other vital areas of common importance. Gary also made unpardonable errors in terms of his financial planning.
His team lacked an implantable standby schedule or a plan ‘ B’ rather when the formal was rendered void due to predictable possible changes. Gary lacked a clear communication strategy. This ended up in an absence of clear communication with the lord. In the end, they had to incur more than twice the time on communication after that. There was also unclear communication between Gary and Gable. When required, Gable could not be found. On other instances, Gable could be seen intervening on the project without proper consultation with Gary.
This ended in making the project management chaotic. It also resulted in the rescheduling and repetition of completed works in the last minutes. As the project proceeded, the customer relationship began to sour. The customer felt that the project was not being implemented in accordance with the outlined specifications.
The customer also noted that there was evident chaos and miscommunication within the department. This is evident in how the customer proceeds to advice Gary on how to refrain from mixing technical works with administrative responsibilities. From then on, the customer decided to effect some changes into the entire project. The changes meant that the project management team had to incur extra costs because the customer refused to cater for the additional expenses. It also meant that the team had to work extra hours and harder because the entire project was running on a fixed deadline. In any project management work, several limitations face the team and hamper the efficient and timely completion of the entire project. For Gary’s case, the sources for these disruptions included the continued communication problem. This hindered him from updating information from the R&D and that from the administrative works.
In every project, there are unavoidable changes in the middle of the project. A standby schedule cannot be efficiently implemented if the change is unpredictable as is evident in Gary’s case. Communication with the client ends up having a two-fold effect on the project. The good side is that it saves the time of redoing some of the works if the problems can be identified in good time. On the other hand, it could cause unnecessary delays on the project since the client will always demand more.
Gary was also faced with the problem of having different perspectives with Gable and Paul. This is normal because top managers tend to have different views with project managers even in a setting characterized by efficient communication. This had adverse effects on the line operations as they were subjected to re-doing work that had been completed leading to loss of time.