Miles Wilder, project manager for the Cybersonic project, considers himself a project manager's project manager." He claims to use the principles of good project management, starting with having a plan and using it to carefully track the project. He announces to his team leaders that status meetings will be held on alternate Mondays throughout the expected year-long project. All 18 project team leaders must attend and give rundowns of the tasks they are currently working on. All the team leaders show up for the first status meeting. Seven are currently managing work for the project and are scheduled to give reports; the other 11 are not yet working on the project (as specified by the project schedule) but attend because Miles wants them to stay informed about project progress. The meeting is scheduled for 3 hours; the team leaders are to report on whatever they think important. After 4 hours of reports by five of the leaders, Miles ends the meeting. Several major problems are reported that he tries to resolve at the meeting. Specific actions to resolve some of them are decided, and Miles schedules another meeting for 2 days later to address the other problems and hear the remaining two reports. Some of the team leaders are miffed because they'll have to change their schedules to attend the meeting. Miles arrives an hour late at the next meeting, which, after 3 hours, allows enough time to resolve all the problems but not enough for the two leaders to give reports. Miles asks them if they are facing any major issues or problems. When they respond no," he lets them skip the reports but promises to start with them at the next meeting 2 weeks later. A few of the team leaders are assigned actions to address current problems. Some of the attendees feel the meeting was a waste of time. Before the next meeting, some of the leaders inform Miles they cannot attend and will send representatives. This meeting becomes awkward for three reasons. First, several new problems about the project are raised and, again, the ensuing discussion drags out and there is insufficient time for everyone to give a status report; only six of a scheduled eight team leaders give their reports. Second, some of the leaders disagree with Miles about actions assigned at the previous meeting. Because no minutes had been taken at that meeting, each leader had followed his/her own notes about actions to take, some of which conflict with Miles's expectations. Third, people at the meeting who are representatives are not fully aware of what happened at the previous meetings, do not have sufficient information to give complete reports or answer questions, and are hesitant to commit to action without their team leaders' approval. The next several meetings follow the same pattern: they run over schedule, fewer team leaders and more representatives attend, status reports are not given because of inadequate time, people disagree over problems identified and actions to be taken. The project falls behind schedule because problems are not addressed adequately or quickly enough. Miles feels that too much time is being wasted on resolving problems at the meetings and that many problems should, instead, be resolved entirely by the team leaders. He instructs the leaders to work out solutions and changes on their own and to report at status meetings only the results. This reduces the length of the meetings but creates other complications: some team leaders take actions and make changes that ignore project dependencies and conflict with other leaders' work tasks. Everyone is working overtime, but the Cybersonic project falls further behind schedule. QUESTIONS 1. Why is Miles's approach to tracking and controlling the Cybersonic project ineffective? 2. If you were in charge, what would you do? 2