Project Management Principles in the Orion Shield Case

Executive Summary

Project management deals with the planning, organizing, coordinating and directing of the organization’s scarce resources to achieve a specific goal. Every company has a number of projects running at a given point of time. The success of any project is dependent upon the knowledge, skills, and abilities of its managers. In the given case, Gary Allison was assigned the role of project manager for Scientific Engineering Corporation (SEC). But Gary Allison lacked the experience to manage projects at a company like SEC. Unable to manage the issues on his own; Gary depended upon unethical supervisors who have misled him. The main theme of the case is program management. Its importance has been illustrated frequently in the case. Success of entire companies can rest with the ability of program managers to meet the requirements, schedule and budgets for various projects. Without these key skills in program managers, companies tend to default on their contractual obligations and lost significant sums of money for the organization. The current case deals with some of the key mistakes committed by Gary Allison and his team members regarding the ethical, technical, legal, contractual, and other issues related to program management. All these issues are important and play an important role in the success of a project.

Analysis of the Orion Shield Case

Question 1

What Project Management principles, if any, were violated in this case?

Answer

The success of any project is dependent upon all the players involved in it. Failure to properly execute their role will result in the wastage of organization’s resources and the ultimate failure of the project. Below are the project management principles violated by persons associated with the Orion Shield Project.

Gary Allison

One of the key principles of project management is having transparency with all the people involved in it. Gary Allison was not experienced in handling major projects like the ‘Orion Shield’. He did not have the administrative capabilities to run a project worth millions of dollars. He struggled for months to find the technical plan right for the project. He was required to be in regular contact with the main contractor for the project, viz. Space Technologies Industries (STI). He was also required to intimate the minutes of the meetings related to project execution with Sarah Wilson who from STI. According to Brenner (2007), clear communication builds team chemistry and gives the team members a clearer idea of their roles. Gary Allison failed to maintain a clear line of communication with Sarah Wilson. This resulted in the failure to identify the problems in project execution quickly in a timely manner. Poor communication ultimately resulted in missing of some milestones in project execution.

Another key principle of successful project management is having a clear goal for the project. While struggling to understand the technicalities of the project, Gary Allison neglected the administrative issues related to the project. This resulted in the missing the deadline for submitting a good proposal to STI. The facts in the proposal had to be ultimately cooked as it was not ready on time. Lacked of a proper goal gave a bad start to the project.

Henry Larsen

One of the basic principles of project management is to be ethical in dealings between the different persons involved in the project. Henry Larsen was the Director of Engineering at SEC. He was responsible for taking care of the technical issues regarding the projects executed in the organization. Gary Allison struggled with the technical issues related to the project. He could not prepare a proposal to be submitted to STI within the prescribed time period. Henry Larsen should have offered all the required help to Gary Allison in successfully preparing the project. If the need arose, she should also have asked a different person to take over the project. Instead, he forced Gary Allison to fudge the details of the proposal. Submission of a fudged proposal resulted in the ultimate failure of the project. The issue showed that the lack of ethics for a senior management member could spell doom to a project.

Elliott Grey

Elliott Grey in the Director of Project Management at SEC. It was the responsibility of Gary Allison to regularly stay in touch with Elliott Grey and submit the expenditure reports. It was Gary Allison who failed to maintain proper communication with other people related to the project. Hence, Elliott Grey did not violate any Project Management Principles.

Paula Arnold

If a project needs to succeed, all the persons associated with it need to follow a chain of command. Due to the inefficiency of Gary Allison in understanding the technical details related to the project, he could not give timely reports to Henry Larsen. Hence, Henry Larsen continuously undermined the role of Gary Allison and directly sought information from Paula Arnold. Paula Arnold has quietly acquiesced to the demands of Henry Larsen and started communicating directly with him. This lack of a proper chain of command led to chaos and confusion leading to the failure of the project.

Question 2

What structural and cultural characteristics of SEC allowed each of these individuals to behave as they did?

Answer

The structural and cultural characteristics of an organization will have a big impact in the way the organization functions. Lack of a proper organizational structure and ethical culture can impede the progress of the organization. Different organizations follow different kinds of organizational structures depending upon their need. Some of the most popular organizational structures followed by organizations are: Functional organizational structure and Matrix organizational structure.

In the give case, SEC followed a Functional organizational structure where the organization is divided into functional divisions. Each functional division operates independently and the workers in a particular functional area like operations and engineering and program management report to their functional managers. However, Functional organizational structure is not suitable for all types of organizations. While organizations in industries like FMCG and Automobiles benefit a lot from the Functional organizational structure, it is not suitable for organizations which mainly deal in outsourced work like SEC. Following the Functional organizational structure resulted in lack of autonomy for Gary Allison in handling the project from NASA.

Similarly, cultural factors also have a major impact on the performance of the organization. According to Hofstede (1984), people can be either individualistic or collectivistic. In individualistic cultures, people believe in their capabilities and take independent decisions. Western countries like USA and UK are highly individualistic. In collectivistic cultures, people value the opinion of groups. People expect protection from groups in return for their loyalty. In SEC, people are highly individualistic and did not value the opinion of the group. Senior managers like Henry Larsen were taking decisions on their own without consulting other people connected with the project. People in the organization also did not give value to ethics. Top managers encouraged their subordinates to fudge the facts.

• Organizations that exclusively focus on executing projects should not follow Functional or Matrix Organizational structures. As their needs are quite different from other organizations, the Project Management Body Knowledge advocates them to follow a Projectised organizational structure. In this kind of organizational structure, the project manager has full control over the project. He will be in a position to take all the decisions regarding the project without any interference from other executives in the organization. If SEC followed a Projectised organizational structure, Gary Allison would have been able to take decisions without interference from Henry Larsen and other executives.

SEC should also encourage its employees to develop a collectivist culture. Having a collectivistic culture will reduce conflicts between the team members. All the other managers related to the project would also give their full support to Gary Allison in finding solutions relating to the project. This would have protected the project from failing.

• Since lack of proper communication and coordination was found to be a major reason behind the failure of the project, the project managers should follow some principles from general management like following an open door policy and discouraging grapevine from spreading among his team members and the organization. The project managers should set himself as an example in leading an ethical life. He should discourage his subordinates from resorting to any kind of unethical behavior. When his superiors like Henry Larsen ask him to distort the facts, he should blow the whistle and make everybody inside and outside the organization know about the unethical activities. In this way, he could stop unethical activities from impacting the performance of the project.

Question 3

What guidance do project management principles give for creating effective communication, and what do you think Gary would have done differently if he had been well versed in those principles?

Answer

Lack of proper communication was one of the main reasons for the failure of the project. Gary Allison failed to communicate the updates regarding the project to different stakeholders like the main contractor STI and other executives in the organization. As he could not grasp the technical aspects relating the project easily, he neglected the administrative aspects of the project completely.

The project management principles advocate adherence to the four steps for effective communication between members of a project. The four steps are: Identifying communication requirements, Identifying and removing obstacles for effective communication, Communication sharing, and Examining communication factors.

Identifying Communication Requirements

The project managers and the team members should work together to identify which stakeholder needs what kind of information. Different stakeholders need different kinds of information. Making this information available will the communication flow smoother an

 

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References

• Brenner, D. A. (2007). Achieving a successful project by motivating the project team. Cost Engineering, 49(5), 16-20.
• Hofstede, G. (1984). Culture’s consequences: International differences in work-related values, SAGE Publications: Beverly Hills, CA.