Overview of Case Study in Project Management
The following article provides an outline for Case Study in Project Management. A project is a number of cohesive operations put together in an orderly manner which has a lot of in-depth study and design work out everything systematically to achieve the set goals. In simple words, a project helps make something that is unique. A project has to be managed properly in order to be executed properly. The manager and his team, who undertake a project, design a process devoid of all the unnecessary hindrances and can achieve what it needs to in a stipulated time. This procedure is called the life cycle of a project. Project management uses knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to shape project activities to meet the project’s requirements. It involves the four stages of project management- initiating, planning, executing, and closing a project.
Every field, particularly in the service sector, has become competitive today. Mostly because the service sector is completely project-driven. A recruited employee of any company has to get a project to work on or else stand high chances of losing his/her job. So, project management is very crucial in the corporate world. It is not a skillset as it is understood to be; it is a practice. Project management can be done best through estimation. In short, estimation is nothing but an approximation. It includes estimating the minimum required amount of each input for a project to be timely completed. A project manager must take note of the estimated approximate amount of money, time, effort, resources, and scope required to successfully execute a project based on past data, knowledge, assumptions, and risk involved using the Agile process.
Agile adoption is the driving force for organizations in this competitive world and in a situation where the most precious resource is time. Alternative methodologies are being devised to reduce the time consumption in a project. These lightweight techniques are a part of an Agile methodology.
Case Study
Case study for project management is given below:
- An agile adoption study was conducted on a project to make amendments to an obsolete enterprise data warehouse. The team members were working together for the first time on this project.
- The scrum process was used to implement Agile in the project. The data used in this case study has been collected from three sources: recorded, scribed, and analyzed conversations.
Findings – Case Study in Project Management
All the findings ended up with mixed reactions. The main issue among participants was that the scrum process lacked planning. The collaborative and dynamic aspects of the process were praised by one and all.
1. Negative Feedback
- Big Picture and the Lack of Planning: The majority of the participants did not appreciate the big picture absence. Though the project had a case study, there was no proper planning and implementation. Thus, the final deliverable of the project was not being figured out. The scrum process did not have a vision for the project and hence, no strategy for the project. It was assumed that the big picture was already known, and there was no need to define it. The process of the scrum was too detailed, even though the backlog was built. Defining the goals and the big picture was more important than getting into the itemized process directly.
- Lack of Documentation in the Process: As per the participants, the documentation process was neglected in the scrum process, and hence, the process was scattered, and its requirements were not met. Requirements can come up at any point in time due to numerous team collaborations. The team members had to communicate through mail or else verbally to overcome this limitation.
2. Positive Feedback
But a few aspects of the process garnered positive reviews from the participants.
- Team Spirit: In this process, the participants interacted a lot with each other, which helped build team spirit. this process encouraged sharing as a quality.
- Dynamic: The process made the team very dynamic, and all the members and their opinions were heard.
3. Lessons Learned
The amendments that should be made to make the Agile process more effective are:
- The Agile process should be clearly and thoroughly planned.
- Agility should be executed step by step as a direct transition is very risky.
- The big picture should be defined precisely for the strategy to be decided on.
- Continuous improvement of the Agile implementation is needed through feedback.
A process that is suitable for the implementation of the Agile methodology or not is something that should be evaluated beforehand. Various parameters should be considered and acknowledged while conducting this evaluation.
- Cultural Fit: Organisational culture determines the success of the implementation of the Agile process. Agile is not a panacea; organizations with a suitable culture can attain success and desired results to some extent and not completely. If Agile is a mismatch, then it becomes a cultural change and not an adaptation.
- Project Execution Maturity: Is your team on time in delivery? On-time delivery is not just a process but also a culture. Changing the process does not guarantee regular delivery every time one is made. When all the inter-related processes are modified and fledged up, the process pays overall.
- Expectations: Expectations out of the Agile process should be clearly stated as the framework lays down just the principles and not the benefits.
- People: All stakeholders need to be consulted and should be made to participate in the implementation of Agile. this helps in gaining consensus on pertaining issues.
- Distributed Environment: Agile implementation needs a lot of collaborations and implementations, and so, if a team is geographically distributed, then its implementation is difficult. Thus, a distributed environment is challenging for Agile implementation.
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