Western Oceanography Institute - Case Study
Young's response to the director should be as follows:
She should accept the full responsibility for the project mismanagement, apologize to all members, and avoid responding defensively to everyone's complaints and frustration.
She should admit that the project is experiencing more issues than it was anticipated. However, she should assure the director and the staff that the issues are manageable and clearly explain how she will respond to the issues and propose the plan of actions she will implement.
She should ask the director and the staff to identify their problems and take a note of all the project related issues that they are experiencing.
She needs to assure the director and the staff of her ability to bring the project to a successful completion.
Moreover, in order to gain the staff's support and cooperation, she needs to individually follow up with the people who were negatively affected by the conversion and make sure to address their issues in a timely manner by taking corrective actions and constantly keeping them updated on the progress.
Question #2
The following mistakes were made by Young:
Assuming a one size fits all approach. Although she had prior experience, projects vary from company to company and project to project. By not making that assumption, she could have been more prepared to mitigate and correct unforeseen delays.
She allowed her workload to consume her social life at work that perhaps could have been very useful in dealing with people. People may be more forgiving if you have a personal relationship with them. Perhaps, if she had a relationship with co-workers, she could have gotten better attendance at the briefing meetings.
Nursing Poncho just delayed the inevitable of fixing the server, which was left to replace it at the same time the new NT system was installed. More upfront preparatory work could have allowed for less work during the project execution.
She should have used her resources to delegate some of the work
She should accept the full responsibility for the project mismanagement, apologize to all members, and avoid responding defensively to everyone's complaints and frustration.
She should admit that the project is experiencing more issues than it was anticipated. However, she should assure the director and the staff that the issues are manageable and clearly explain how she will respond to the issues and propose the plan of actions she will implement.
She should ask the director and the staff to identify their problems and take a note of all the project related issues that they are experiencing.
She needs to assure the director and the staff of her ability to bring the project to a successful completion.
Moreover, in order to gain the staff's support and cooperation, she needs to individually follow up with the people who were negatively affected by the conversion and make sure to address their issues in a timely manner by taking corrective actions and constantly keeping them updated on the progress.
Question #2
The following mistakes were made by Young:
Assuming a one size fits all approach. Although she had prior experience, projects vary from company to company and project to project. By not making that assumption, she could have been more prepared to mitigate and correct unforeseen delays.
She allowed her workload to consume her social life at work that perhaps could have been very useful in dealing with people. People may be more forgiving if you have a personal relationship with them. Perhaps, if she had a relationship with co-workers, she could have gotten better attendance at the briefing meetings.
Nursing Poncho just delayed the inevitable of fixing the server, which was left to replace it at the same time the new NT system was installed. More upfront preparatory work could have allowed for less work during the project execution.
She should have used her resources to delegate some of the work