Case Study: Introducing Project Management at Global Green Books Publishing Global Green Books Publishing was started two years ago by two friends, Jim King and Brad Mount, who met in college while studying in Philadelphia, USA. In the new business Jim focused on editing, sales and marketing while Brad Mount did the electronic assembly and publishing of books for Global Green Books. Their business was successful and profitable in the first two years, largely due to contracts from two big businesses. In their third year they got very busy thanks to their third major customer, a local college that needed customized eBooks. They hired several part time employees to help them with their publishing business. But by the end of third year of operation, Global Green Books started experiencing critical problems. They were: unable to leverage all the new employees effectively unable to deliver eBooks to their customers on schedule unable to provide quality textstime and money was being spent fixing defects in their products unable to control coststheir business was not profitable in the third year. Global Green Books saw a significant rise in issues, a lot of unpleasant surprises were cropping up; business was down as new resources were hired, also some of the projects were poorly estimated. The local university was unhappy as their eBook products reached campus late for use by professors and student. In some cases, the books were a week or two late. Since the courses must start on schedule and students need their books at the beginning of their courses, the new lucrative college customer was unhappy. One of the new part-time employees hired by Jim and Brad, Samantha, had taken a project management course at college. Samantha was excited about the discipline of project management and had intentionally selected a job with Global Green Books Publishing as she saw an opportunity to polish her project management skills. One fine day, Jim invited Samantha, for a lunch meeting. He was aware that Samantha was familiar with project management, and wanted to hear what she had to say about the problems he and Brad were facing. Over lunch he questioned why their small business which had operated and implemented projects so successfully over the first two years was being challenged significantly now. He specifically listed the problems they were facing and asked for input to solve them. Samantha asked for more time to research all the issues but noted that Global Green Books, while being innovative, completed projects without a roadmap or a project plan and lacked a disciplined approach to project management. She noted that Jim and Brad did not use any project software for scheduling and they did not use tools or techniques to estimate, budget or to communicate with stakeholders. Finally, they had no processes in place to manage project risks and quality. Impressed with this and other conversations, Jim King asked Samantha if she would consider joining them as a project associate or project manager on a full-time basis to help them introduce project management practices and help them tide over their current crisis. Samantha accepted the offer! She has several key skillsshe is an excellent communicator with very good interpersonal skills and detail-oriented. Within the first three months in her new role as PM, she introduced formal project management processes, created a PM manual and trained the employees to get the work done well. Within nine months Samantha had fully turned things around. Due to proactive risk analysis and risk response planning, surprises and issues reduced. Communication with stakeholders was enhanced. Brad and Jim noted that the company was delivering projects on schedule, the quality processes workedand customers were happy with the products!

To Do

First, select your project scenario, then identify a list of "stakeholders" - individuals or groups who are impacted by the project process (work on the project) and/or the result.

Use the following questions as criteria to determine if an individual or group will be included as a stakeholder. An individual or group who meets one or more of the above criteria should be identified as a stakeholder. Stakeholders from the same organization can be grouped in order to simplify communication and stakeholder management, for example, part-time employees at Global Green Books.

Questions to help you identify stakeholders

1. Will the person or their organization be directly or indirectly affected by this project?
2. Does the person or their organization hold a position from which they can influence the project?
3. Does the person have an impact on the projects resources (material, personnel, funding)?
4. Does the person or their organization have any special skills or capabilities the project will require?
5. Does the person potentially benefit from the project or are they in a position to resist this change?

Once you identify the stakeholders, plot them on the Power/Interest grid

To submit with your posting, your Power/Interest grid. Along with the grid, explain why you selected the people and/or groups as stakeholders and your reasons for placing them in the particular quadrant on the grid. Tip: the questions that will help you determine whether or not an individual or group is a stakeholder on your project and the reasons why. Use that information in your responses here.