Chapter 12
Every week, we ate a topic or two to read and digest got from the course that we are taking. These readings are essential as they help the students better understand the course content by having a section of the whole course to read every week. This week, we had two topics to read, that is, Processes, Methodologies, and economics. Chapter 12 looked at Project control, while chapter 13 was looking at Research and development projects. From these two topics, there are several aspects that I learned and feel were important to me.
Chapter 12 learned about several measurements for project control and the categories that each measurement affected. I learned that the lack of technical information and failure in tests in an organization would affect performance and the project cost and schedule (Kivilä et al., 2017). I also learned the schedule of milestones or the control points. From chapter 13, I learned about the concept of the relationship between corporate and R&D planning. In R&D planning, there is identifying threats, strengths, opportunities, weaknesses, and critical concerns. Strategies and tactics are also forged at R&D planning. Corporate planning deals with the financial position and marketing needs. From the week’s readings, I learned an external environment that included competition, economics, technology, regulation, and politics (Radujković & Sjekavica, 2017).
In the current market structure and the tenure in which we live, I think it is impossible to find an organization that does not use any control system. The TV industry in the Us has not been doing well for as long as we can remember. Many of the TVs sold by huge stores are from China. This has been due to the US trying to dominate in technology and ignoring the other sectors. The other factor that has led to foreign dominance is America’s poor management in these sectors and its inability to innovate as quickly as required.
When General Motors tried to automate the assembly plants, it failed. First, the company tried to turn the assembly work into several discrete tasks that were to be executed by robots. In so doing, it started undervaluing its workers, which was one reason the project failed. The kind of jobs created by the general motors no longer required human expertise, and slowly the human skills died. People were left to do the same boring thing for decades, without improving their skills. The biggest mistake that the general motors continued to put huge investments, thinking that the secret to success was replacing human labor by technology (Davies, 2017). Instead of workers trying to manufacture perfect cars, they only performed their assigned duties, since they were not motivated to build vehicles. This was the reason why the project did not bore any fruits.
References
Davies, A. (2017). General Motors is going all-electric.
Radujković, M., & Sjekavica, M. (2017). Project management success factors. Procedia Engineering, 196, 607-615.
Kivilä, J., Martinsuo, M., & Vuorinen, L. (2017). Sustainable project management through project control in infrastructure projects. International Journal of Project Management, 35(6), 1167-1183.
Hi,
I have read your post, and I like it. In project planning, there is a relationship between R&D planning and corporate planning. For the R&D strategic plan, the threats, opportunities, strengths, weaknesses, and the key points are identified. It also forges strategies and tactics. Lastly, the project portfolio is selected at R&D planning. During the corporate planning, the financial position is identified as well as the market needs. The external environment that affects planning will include the competition, economics, and the technology applied to the project in question. Lack of technical information and failure in an organization’s tests would affect both performance and the project cost and its schedule.
Hi,
Thank you for your post. There are six stages of the strategic technology planning process. The first stage is information gathering. Here, the status of the business unit is determined and the status of the competition. Technical planning studies are also conducted. The second stage is the consolidation stage, where scenarios of possible futures are derived. The third stage is the strategy formulation stage. Here, a list of needs is analyzed against a list of critical concerns and issues. Preliminary alternatives are also developed at this stage. The last three stages are the selection stage, the implementation stage, and the review stage. In the review stage, the plans are submitted for review adjusted where necessary.