Read the assigned Case Study and address three of the following questions. Then reply to at least two of your peers.

1. Based on your understanding, what are the most important roles and responsibilities of the project manager on this project during the Implementation phase

During the chaos of December 2011, even though there was no real discussion of the board considering Mr. Zhang's resignation, Mr. Zhang nonetheless thought about resigning because of the ongoing fiasco and poor sales performance. Over the 2011 year-end holidays, Mr. Zhang reflected back on how he and his senior executive came to select the ERP.

With the rapid growth of WWE, the business was confronting significant busi- ness process and IT automation issues since 2007. A team of internal business and information technology experts was assembled to examine the situation and make recommendations in 2008. Some smaller ideas were approved and implemented, but those projects were largely limited in addressing the bigger challenges. Most of the ideas, however, were rejected as patchwork or unambitious. The company board eventually involved in the strategizing, and they wanted something bolder. At the same time, with each rejection, the team became both more frustrated and also more aggressive. By mid-2009 at the urging of Mr. Zhang and the board, the team came up with three competing projects for consideration, as shown in the table below:

Since the company was aggressively growing and had not experienced any major failures, the board and senior management made the bold choice of approv- ing #3. But this was not without controversy. Two executives, the chief operat- ing officer and chief information officer both recommended either #2 (COO) or #1 (CIO). But they were overruled by the chief executive officer, chief marketing officer, chief innovation officer, and eventually the Board. Two executives, head of human resources (HR) and head of business strategy, abstained. Now in hindsight, Mr. Zhang thought whether there should be more evaluation of the other proposals and discussion to better understand the other executive's concerns. To Mr. Zhang, there were two major puzzles after approving #3.

The business case was clearly wrong - underestimating cost and ease of imple- mentation. At the same time, the benefit of better reporting and analytics was overstated. The COO raised this concern at the time, but since there was no clear counter solution, it was rejected.

Everything took longer to accomplish. For example, overstating benefits underestimated the implementation schedule. For example, the business requirements were allocated 3 months to complete. But by month 6, the team was still struggling with getting executive buy-ins. The cost outpaced the plan by nearly 50% by the fifth month. CIO and head of HR raised the concern of the implementation schedule, but it was rejected by the general enthusiasm of Mr. Zhang and the Board.