Assignment Task:
You are a project manager at Unisa Mining Solutions (UMS) and you are in a fairly good mood. Your firm develops systems to help miming firms reduce their exploration costs, and you have just returned from a two-week trip from Botswana where you closed a very successful, well-managed project.
As soon as you get back to the office, however, your good mood disappears. Your manager, the
Director of Consulting, has been anxiously awaiting your return.
'Welcome back", he says. "Look, we have a situation. Project Miner has hit an all time low. The clients are really unhappy with progress and the deliverables so far On all counts, quality, cost, t1me, scope, you name it ... our performance is pathetic. The project manager, who you already know, is Homer Simusoni. I know you just got back but can we meet about this on Monday? I may need you to go to Remotespruit, where the project is located, immediately."
You know that Simusoni has never been a good project manager, but it may not be his fault. The client is EmpowerMinerals (EPM), a leading South African mining company. You know that Project Miner is critical to your company but you have no idea what could have gone wrong. At the first session with your boss, several facts are laid out.
Project Miner is a R13,300,000 project which aims to use a computer system to locate precious minerals. The contract cost is relatively small, by mining standards, but the eventual business from this project might generate revenue close to R210 million.
The computer system uses new software developed by your company but which has never been used on the field. In fact, your boss thinks that the system was tested in the laboratory but does not know for sure, and also does not know if the system has ever been tested out of the laboratory. The project charter is silent on this, too.
In the field, the system has repeatedly identified incorrect drilling sites. In addition, the processing of identifying the rocks containing minerals is taking weeks instead of days as mentioned in the project charter. The performance of the system has surprised the system developers at your firm. Even after taking weeks to find a drilling site, none of the 12 identified so far have produced anything other than rock and sand. This is costing the client, whom you developed this for, thousands of dollars a day in exploration costs. EPM is unhappy, as months have gone by with the drilling team mining in the wrong places.
The Director of Consulting also tells you that at the start of the project certain risk items have been kept confidential from EPM. Simusoni had known that key test results done on the system at your laboratory have been misplaced or lost and no backups exist. These were never found at the start of the project and had been identified as a medium risk item. Now, EPM want to know if your company could share the initial test results with them. This was never a contractual agreement so Simusoni kept avoiding this subject altogether. However, it has not improved relationships between the two companies.
In addition, Simusoni's project team, who have been trained on the computer system, are not capable of solving the performance issues. The warranty period for some of the software purchased from outside vendors and used by the computer system has expired and Simusoni decided against purchasing maintenance for the software, as it would have reduced profits by R300,000. Instead he had his team trained for a fraction of the cost, R50,000. However, the classroom training has proved ineffective.
Simusoni and the project team have been working for the last 7 months straight in Remotespruit trying to get the project back on track, but now the Director of Consulting wants Simusoni out and you in. You are required to get the project back on track and tum it into a success.
You arrive late the next day at Remotespruit and immediately gather the project team and Simusom. After a successful fact-finding session that goes late into the night you have extracted the project situation and have confirmed what was discussed at the company headquarters. From the meeting with the team you have found out the following:
- The team members had lost hope in Simusoni as a Project Manager and in the project as a whole due to the fact that they could not find the solution.
- The team is also complaining about Simusoni cutting back on travel to Johannesburg for the team completely. Simusoni's opinion on this was that they had to focus on the problems at hand, and he was quite surprised that the team was still bothered about this.
- The team (all employees) all wanted to just quit, forget about this and go back to headquarters in Johannesburg.
- The computer system has had a success rate of 90% in other mining concessions all over the country.
- The team has access to the software for the system but there do not seem to be any problems with it
- The team wanted headquarters to send specialist experts from out of the company to look at the system using the management reserve in the budget for this project. However, it is unlikely that the financial manager will allow the management reserve to be used up already as the company is still unable to invoice anything in this project to EPM
- The client wants the project to succeed and is willing to do whatever it takes, except putting in more money
- The client needs the computer system to work as their mining strategy depends on this but it must work fast. They are willing to give any solution a try for another month. After this, they will declare the project a failure and ask for their investment in the project (R 13,300,000) back from UMS.
You know that your director and the financial manager may eventually be convinced to invest in this project if you propose another project that will bring Project Miner back on track. That proposed project, which you call "Save the Miner", should answer the question that is puzzling Simusoni's team: "Why has the computer system worked elsewhere but fails to work in Remotespruit?" The purpose of "Save the Miner" will ultimately be to find out what is going wrong with Project Miner and how it can be put right.
You only have a few days to put this new project together and Project Save the Miner will have only six weeks maximum to get this project back on track. You think about this while your take the next step: Project Save the Miner's project charter.
You receive the go-ahead for Project Save the Miner from the CEO of the firm himself, with the promise of a sizeable end-of-year bonus if you pull this through.
Required:
(a) Describe all problems you have encountered so far in this project. As you will use this in developing your project charter, you will need to be as detailed as possible in identifying the problems.