Problem Identification Paper
Legendary management consultant Peter Drucker once said, "So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work." AT&T recently discovered how true that statement is, and in doing so cost the company both financially and in reputation.
The focus of this paper is on the botched attempt by AT&T to gain their competitive edge back from their main competitors. This paper will identify the problems associated with the project and discuss how project management principles were not used to reach project goals while adversity caused the project to implode. The discussion of relative legal compliance aspects causing difficulties for the company will be shown and recommendations will be
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The lack of direction was causing the project to unravel.
When all of AT&T Wireless's major competitors chose another company for wireless number porting, AT&T Wireless should have rethought its choice of a competing vendor, which meant extra layers of integration that ultimately failed. The due diligence of integrating a new system with AT&T's current system was non-existent and the company paid the ultimate price as Cingular, one of AT&T Wireless' largest competitors bought the wireless business from AT&T.
Management of employees and morale prior to, during, and after completion of the project was another significant factor in the failure of the upgrade project. While AT&T wireless was planning to outsource their customer service responsibilities to oversees companies, the management's lack of interpersonal action caused turmoil during the project, thus threatening the outcome. The company would have been better served to postpone layoffs and offshore outsourcing until the systems project was completed. Morale and productivity among AT&T Wireless IT staff were devastated by rumors of offshore outsourcing and layoffs that spun around the project but were left mostly unaddressed by IT leaders.
The lines of communication that should have been kept open and clear were anything but. If the company had planned layoffs or outsourcing is unavoidable during a
Else could have reduced the salary for all the employees for few months and this could have motivated the employees to work more to increase productivity and to save their jobs. So proper procedures to downsize with fairness all around or other plans could have been ideal instead of discriminating and ending up in a legal suit spending more money than saving any.
Three factors define the success of any project; these are time, cost, and quality (Wysocki and RK 2013: 4). This paper identifies three main facets of project management that were inappropriately implemented, namely; Resourcing, Stakeholder Management, and Risk Management and how their improper implementation led to the violation of the three constraints (i.e. time, cost, and quality).
When it comes to the failure of managers, chad believes that manager’s inability to listen, being self-centered, not a team player, and failing to take responsibility most often contributes to their failure. “I remember a time when a colleague of mine was leading a project on the development of a new customer interaction system. His biggest downfall was he did not listen to his frontline employees, when it came to some of the inadequacies of the new system. This ultimately led to him being removed from the project and he never really came back form that.” (C. D. Cerkoney, Personal Communication, February 27, 2012).
i. The new information systems project for an enhanced network firewall appeared to be on a very aggressive implementation schedule. When interviewed, the IT manager said that even if he put all the IT employees on the project full-time for the next two years, the project still couldn’t be completed on time. The IT manager indicated he had spoken to upper management about the issue, but upper management did not take any action.
* Development began in late 2002 and was to be completed in 12 months’ time.
This company in the first place began an initiative without gaining proper knowledge on the benefits and cost of this new venture. They had not done the proper research for just how well this venture would work for them. In doing so, they are expected to be ready for anything that comes their way. Any entrepreneur understands that business is just a matter of taking chances. Anything can happen at any time. When this disappointment happens, the leadership should have sat down to evaluate and discuss the options available to them. They should have counted their opportunity cost. If they would have done this efficiently, then it would have been planned to see that several other options were available to them. Instead of pulling out, they should have looked for other implementation methods available. They should have also invested in security software that would ensure customer information safety.
As a world leader in communication technology, AT&T connects people from all around the globe. Just as consumers and businesses rely on AT&T services to stay connected, AT&T relies on internal resources, in particular project and program managers, to remain a best in-class service
* Write clearly and concisely about issues in IT project management using proper writing mechanics and technical style conventions.
Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities in order to meet project requirements (PMBOK Guide, 2008). Using this definition, it is made evident that the parties involved in the Denver International Airport (DIA) Baggage System project in the 1990’s failed at applying basic organizational practices towards managing the triple constraint of scope, time, and cost goals. The combination of inherent risks, uncertainties, and dysfunctional decision making geared the project towards disappointment while simultaneously designating it as a text book example of what not do when taking on a complex project. By looking at the key strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats we can
They also didn’t appear to honor any form of schedule or business ethics because they were charging direct labor time to the project while working on other projects. Functional management appeared to lack leadership and direction across the whole unit.
Over the next four years, AT&T took action to succeed in changing the environment. It invested 35 billion dollars upgrades to its infrastructure. By mid –2000 AT&T had evolving networks- data, broadband and wireless. IN January 2005, AT&T bought SBC for 16 billion dollars and this created the industry’s premier communications and networking company. And just recently AT&T has merged with Cingular to created even more ties to what you like.
Throughout history there have been many successful companies as well as companies that have been a debacle. The success of the company has to do with the management and how it executes its strategy. If the management is ineffective, the company will most likely fail; however, if the company has good management it is more likely to prosper. There are many responsibilities that a manager must complete, chief among them are the four functions of management are planning, organizing, leading, and controlling (PowerPoint). In order for the company to be successful the management must fulfill all four functions. In some case not all four functions are met to expectation, with the results that the company to be not as successful as it could be if they
In the process of going from a non-project driven firm to a project-driven one, the greatest resistance might come from the executives including the board members, company owners and the vice president. The strong and rigid culture has been instilled in the company since 50 years and as a result, the president's preaching fell on deaf ears. Authoritative support is necessary to execute such strategies and it seems that for Macon Inc., that will be the most difficult one.
Your firm, Supreme Financial Solutions, have just won a £3 million contract from Deep Blue Seaways that will require you – the Project Manager – to execute. You are pretty certain from your experience with Deep Blue Seaways that this project is seriously underfunded by possibly as much as £1 million. You are to replace their outdated finance systems with your company’s renowned Finance Wizard product, a system that processes all financial information, and produces an infinite array of management information reports that have been proved to improve strategic decision making in
Lack of project management clarity: the planning activity had lot of material but lacked content, clear action items and lack of consensus on the milestones. The difficulties in the project only increased with time and a more performance driven style would have kept things on track if introduced early on.