2 Business Topics 1

11 Years to complete a project, plenty of time…maybe not.

Posted on by mikef598

 

The World Cup is arguably the largest sport event in the world.  Most argue that not even the Olympics have the same amount of popularity world-wide.  Being honored to be the host nation comes with huge benefits; money from tourism, publicity across the globe, and a free birth into the tournament.  Not unlike the Olympics, FIFA (the governing body of soccer internationally) awards the location many years in advance to make sure the country is ready.   However with this great honor also comes a lot of risk, the preparation costs billions that the country may not guaranteed to recoup.  In 2010 South Africa held the World Cup, however as the event approached there were doubts if they would actually be ready.  As late as February 2010 FIFA and South Africa announced they still were not finished with the main stadium and still had 300,000 tickets unsold for the June tournament.  During South Africa’s planning rumors were common about other countries England or the United States hosting at the last minute.  This tarnished their reputation and could have been an underlying cause of a lower than expected attendance during the tournament. South Africa did successfully host the tournament however, it is very doubtful that they made a profit on the event.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter (R) and Qata

In 2011, Qatar was announced to be the host country for the 2022 world cup.  Since the announcement, Qatar has had to deal with tremendous pressure.  With many nations watching, any slip in schedule or wrong steps will make front-page headlines.  Project management for the event has proven very critical throughout the process.   Since Qatar received the announcement, there has been little headway in infrastructure and building. Many of the projects that have had little progress will affect others for instance the infrastructure needs to be completed before other projects, such as stadiums, can start. Keeping projects moving forward has shown to be one of the issues that have plagued Qatar.  It appears the government has realized one of the issues; in March, they held project management training to try to help the situation in scheduling and planning.  It is good to see that Qatar is identifying problems early and addressing them quickly.  As many are worried about this after living through South Africa’s struggles and Brazil’s (who host next year). I am confident that Qatar will in fact rise to the occasion.  The benefit to Qatar is its wealth; they will be able to spend more money to assure the projects get back on track as opposed to the last two host nations.   With Qatar realizing the issues with schedules, and wiliness to work on underlying issue such as project management skills Qatar will be ready for 2022; However, the jury is still out as to whether the event will actually generate any profit for the nation. The years leading up to the event will be critical assure the public, that the projects are on track and the event will live up to its hype.

http://www.constructionweekonline.com/article-22793-qatar-first-signs-of-progress/#.Ubocb-fVDTo

What do “Great Projects” have in Common?

Posted on by denizc598

The article, “What Great Projects Have in Common,” gave a great overview of the common characteristics of highly successful projects. The overview was based on research and initially included the following selection measures.

  1. It was a major undertaking of strategic importance to the initiating organization.
  2. Its outcome contributed substantially and for an extended period of time to the performance of its organization and the well-being of customers and users.
  3. It was highly innovative from a scientific, technological, design or operational perspective.
  4. The project’s outcome had a major impact on its industry and stimulated others to follow in its footsteps.

(Dvir and Shenhar, 2011)

With the selection measures listed above, 46 projects were selected from various industries. The list was then narrowed down to 15. This was based on a survey from five experienced executives, and the projects ranged from the construction of The Sydney Opera House to the launch of the extraterrestrial spacecraft into the Milky Way (NASA’s Kepler project).  Interesting enough, out of the 15 great projects, 12 of them shared the following common characteristics listed below.

  1. A great project involves creating a unique competitive advantage and/or exceptional value for its stakeholders.
  2. These projects began with a long period of project definition that was dedicated to defining a powerful vision and clear need and selecting the best execution approach.
  3. Great projects create a revolutionary project culture.
  4. A great project needs a highly qualified project leader who is unconditionally supported by top management.
  5. Great projects maximize use of existing knowledge, often in cooperation with outside organizations.
  6. These projects have integrated development teams with fast problem-solving capability and the ability to adapt to business, market and technology changes.
  7. Great project teams have a strong sense of partnership and pride.

(Dvir and Shenhar, 2011)

From this aspect, I think that the “Configuration Management” project that I am currently co-leading with my manager displays most of the common characteristics of great projects. This project is a multi-year global project, and the goal is to develop an end-to-end product life cycle solution that includes designing and implementing a combination of best practice processes, procedures and tools.  It also includes creating a systematic and controlled environment of configuration management that is scalable for the entire company. Most of all, the project displays common characteristics #1, #2, #3, #6, and #7, and will be changing the company culture and the way Baxter Healthcare does business. Similarly, my manager is a highly qualified project leader that has top management support for this highly visible and strategic project. However, one area that we need to work on is common characteristic #5. We need to benchmark with other companies to learn more about best practice processes, procedures and tools for configuration management.

Overall, what do you think great projects have in common? Do you agree with the initial selection measures and seven common characteristics?  What examples can you provide from your previous project experience as great projects?

 

References

MITSloan Mgt Review_Spr 2011_What Great Projects Have in Common

Mobile Age – Take it or leave it.

Posted on by mopea598

Mobile Age – Take it or leave it.

One of the things I have noticed recently is how everything is shifting to mobile. The younger generations don’t even know how to use any other device to communicate outside their cell phone or other hand held devices. Base on a post by Stephen Pierzchala on January 15, 2013, titled Mobile Commerce Has Come of Age. Are You Ready? It is obvious that there is a paradigm shift to mobile devices for personal use and commerce. Which made me think if there will be more mobile projects targeting mobile users of all ages. The mobile apps in the US have doubled in the past years. Stephen Pierzhala noted that “Mobile is the fastest-growing segment of the online commerce world”.

 

mobile                              gsma1

Figure 1.                                                                                                            Figure 2

This fact is backed up the Global Association of Mobiles companies (GMSA). See the figure below. Universities lecture are available online. Many students are used to listening to class lectures on their mobile device. There are several factors leading to this growth. There are so many apps for mobile devices. Almost all major banks, insurance companies and supermarkets have a mobile app to buy products and/or services online.

The cultural shift to mobile life style is global in nature but not at the same rate globally. The US is leading the paradigm shift followed by Europe. In the 2013 report by GSMA (link 2 below) shows that mobile wireless data use per connection in the U.S. is significantly higher than in the EU. In 2013, Cisco projects U.S. customers will use nearly twice as much data per connection as customers in the EU. Figure 3 in this blog show how much data US mobile consumers are using compare to European mobile consumer.

gsma2

The mobile space will continue to grow there are endless providers of mobile devices and services. One of the major problems is the quality of service. The mobile space quality of service varies from one provider to another, even within the US which has the highest rating globally. Mobile users in the US still complain about poor quality of service depending on where you are located. While the mobile industry has grown significantly especially with products such as I-Phone, I-pad, etc, there are still room for a lot of improvement. With respect to project management it is interesting to know which of the project management principles or philosophy will not work very well when developing mobile products, applications (apps), or services. I have seen many DePaul students especially the undergrad playing video games on their mobile devices. Which make me to also wonder the type of problems these mobile devices introduces to our society and what educational project will be needed to build awareness against the dangers it poses. I believe don’t text while driving is clearly established as an example. ATT has developed an app to solve this problem see reference 4.

 

Reference

  1. http://www.dmnews.com/mobile-commerce-has-come-of-age-are-you-ready/article/276182/#
  2. http://www.gsmamobilewirelessperformance.com/GSMA_Mobile_Wireless_Performance_May2013.pdf
  3. http://www.mobal.com/international-cell-phones/
  4. http://developer.att.com/developer/forward.jsp?passedItemId=12500023&_requestid=39763&gclid=CNjAvZ2Q1rcCFbFAMgodi2oAGQ

Happy Competitors

Posted on by spr1323kpatel

 

On June 27 BlackBerry will launch its BBM messaging application for both iOS and Android smartphone platform users for free. BBM has been of one the key features in all BlackBerry smartphones.  According to blackBerry there are currently more than 60 million monthly active users of BBM, who send and receive more than 10 billion messages each day. This equivalents nearly twice as many messages per user per day as compared to other mobile messaging apps.

Few years ago BBM was the most active messaging application in the market and the reason for many people not to switch to an iPhone or Android cellphones. It was also very secure, reliable and was also equipped with voice, video calling and screen sharing and was on its way to become into a new type of social network. Even to this date there is nothing else that comes close to such service.  This gave Black Berry the edge over all the smartphones in the market and had established a very loyal fan following.

But soon blackBerry will make BBM available on both IOS and Android devices and this might just take away its edge.  As BBM was the main platform for people to interact on their BlackBerry smart-phones, this new service will give its consumers the ability to use this application onto any one of those devices of their choosing and I think this will create a big problem for BlackBerry in the near future.

I think BlackBerry should have hold on making this move and should have seen how their new smartphones will perform and on based on that they should have made the decision of what to do with their BBM application on whether or not they should put in the hands of their rival smartphone companies like Apple and Google.  To me it also seems weird that they would launch this application on other IOS and android devices before launching it on to their BlackBerry PlayBook.  Does this mean that they have completely given up on their tablet market? If so what kind of message would this send to their consumers and investors?

Another thing that BlackBerry has done is that they will be providing the BBM application for free to its both IOS and android users. I don’t think this was a smart move from a management standpoint. If you know that so many people are using your application and that it is one of the best one out in the market then they should have charged some sort of a purchase fee for the application knowing that people will pay for it no matter what. This would have given some sort of extra side revenue that they could have applied to their operations.

I also believe that if they would have acted on this sooner when the demand for application was even greater couple years earlier then what it is today, it might have still worked out to their benefit.

Do you think that this move will prove profitable for BlackBerry or will it backfire? Also should they have acted earlier on this when other applications like What’s App, iMessage were not as popular?

Sources:

http://n4bb.com/multiplatform-bbm-blackberrys-play-biggest-social-network/

http://www.yolevski.com/blackberry-bbm-for-iphone-and-android/

http://bgr.com/2013/06/05/blackberry-bbm-android-iphone-preloaded/

Tesla: Creating a revolution in the luxury car industry

Posted on by spr1322jkhandwala

If you are somewhat familiar even a little bit about stocks and have an interest in investing, you probably have heard about the recent boom of Tesla Motors (NASDAQ: TSLA) stock. Recently, the stock went as high as $110 a share; this was a 103% increase over a one month period and a 247% increase over a 3 month period.Source: AutoBlog

So you may be thinking, what caused this sudden increase and growth? Tesla stock first jumped 31% on May 8th when it announced its First Quarter sales to be $562 Million and recorded  first quarterly profit in its 10-year history of $15 million.  In a letter to shareholders, CEO Elon Musk mentioned that Tesla delivered 4,900 electric vehicles as well as other important figures. One of them being that their gross margin doubled from 2012 to 17 percent. This was made possible due to better use of raw materials, smarter inventory management, and a reduction in the hours required to build each car by 40 percent over the quarter.

In the first quarter of the year, Tesla delivered more than 4,750 Model S vehicles in the US which when compared to the more traditional luxury car brands such as BMW 7-series and Mercedes S Class, is much higher. BMW sold 2,338 7-Series models in the first quarter while Mercedes sold 3,077 S-Class models. The demand for their most popular model, Model S, is projected to be around 20,000 units per year in North America and in Europe, the current order rate is 200 per week. In order to meet these demands, they have added some changes to their manufacturing process which should drive margins higher.

Some of these changes include:

(1) a reduction in temp workers since the beginning of the      year

(2) increased efficiencies and reduced scrappage both at supplier and in-house production sites

(3) a streamlining of operations leading to a further reduction in full time employee man-hours from 60-70hrs/week previously to 40-50 hrs/week currently

(4) a significant improvement in logistics costs.

 

Currently their body assembly and finished assembly are still running on a 2 shift basis so the main goal of the production team right now is to get production levels of 20,000 on a single shift across most processes.

With the Tesla Model S being a luxury car and priced at $62,400, I feel that its affordable and much better then other cars. Do you see Tesla continuing to be as successful as they are now and do you think their stock price will continue to go up as it is now? As I mentioned earlier, they out sold Mercedes and BMW luxury models, do you think that will continue to happen in the future as well? What would you rather have, Tesla or other traditional luxury car models?

 

 

http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/08/tesla-stock-jumps-almost-20-after-record-562m-in-sales-and-first-ever-quarterly-profit/

http://www.valuewalk.com/2013/04/tesla-motors-inc-tsla-model-s-sells-more-than-mercedes-and-bmw/

http://www.valuewalk.com/2013/05/tesla-motors-inc-tsla-envisions-selling-around-500k-units-long-term/

Don’t Lose Your Project Inside Your Backpack

Posted on by w13david

What comes to mind when you think about project management?  Planning, organizing, budgets, constraints, deadlines, etc. are all typically taken into consideration to complete a project.  Technology vendors such as Microsoft all seem to have the latest and greatest software to coordinate project management activities, but is there a simpler way?

Kevin Purdy wrote an article on Lifehacker, a website providing software and personal productivity recommendations, and discussed how the “good old” whiteboard helped him successfully plan a major conference.  Purdy references that he unintentionally set himself up as the only person that really knew every task that had to be completed to put on the conference.  The conference was rapidly approaching, and he had “110 nervous thoughts” that needed to be acted upon to make the conference a successful reality.

Purdy decided to gather the appropriate members that were helping to plan the conference, and they marched off to a room with nothing more than some desks and a whiteboard.  He states that they accomplished more in that room than they had in their last 6 to 8 meetings combined, and he credits it all to the whiteboard.  He indicated that the whiteboard reduced time in the overall decision making process.  Purdy says in his article, “You write something, add a question mark, and people in the room can decide on it right then, instead of across days in an email thread.”

So how else can a whiteboard solve a project management dilemma?  First and foremost, writing things down is always helpful, and whiteboards are big enough for everyone on the project management team to see.  Whiteboards tend to make it feel less like you’re committing to something and more like you’re throwing out an idea for consideration.  Whiteboards also inspire you to fill all of the space, and therefore expand and branch out your thoughts.

As Purdy also references, “Whiteboards are nearly impossible to lose inside your backpack.”  This seems like somewhat of a sarcastic comment at first, but think about it some more.  It actually makes perfect sense.  It becomes very difficult to lose sight of your goals and objectives when they are as big as life on a board right in front of you. By putting everything on a whiteboard you can motivate others to complete tasks and you can really start to control your resources. The whiteboard becomes the project management plan.

Not every project is overseen by someone with a project management background either.  For those people that aren’t very good at explaining what tasks need to be completed, the whiteboard may just be your savior.   Software, risk analysis, implementation plans and other project management tools might be needed for more complex and sophisticated projects; however, the next time you’re stuck on a project, consider the simple, cheap whiteboard as an alternative.

 

Click the link below to view the article.

http://lifehacker.com/5950957/how-a-whiteboard-helped-a-terrible-delegator-keep-a-team-on+task

Changing the Gaming Landscape

Posted on by spr1323kpatel

 

Recently Microsoft announced their newest version of its Xbox series, the Xbox One. The Xbox has been one of the most profitable products for the Microsoft in the last decade and with Xbox One Microsoft hopes to continue that tradition. When Xbox 360 was last released around eight years ago there were no iPads; we still had smart phones with keyboards and the smart phone app stores were still in there initial phase. But a lot has changed in the last eight years; today games can be played from virtually anywhere and on any device with everyone online.

Because of the rise in the mobile gaming and its low prices, gaming systems like Xbox, Play-Stations, Nintendo has started seeing decline in their sales.  According to a report released by a leading technology research firm IDC, they concluded that paying for games on smart-phones and tablets would outpace paid gaming on portable video game hand-held devices by the end of the year. According to Nick Wingfield’s article in the New York Times U.S retail sales of game hardware and software fell by 25 percent to $495.2 million in April from $657.3 million earlier last year. This means that more and more people prefer mobile gaming rather then the old traditional gaming methods. This also proves that the life cycle for these gaming consoles will be cut short drastically unless they innovate their products for more use then just gaming.

So to keep up in the race, companies like Microsoft has started innovating their gaming consoles into more useful ways. Microsoft noted saying that they want to see their Xbox product as a more useful tool in peoples living room then just for gaming purposes. So to achieve this they want the Microsoft’s technology to take the center stage of a home entertainment system, which would end up giving people access to online videos. Apart from that Microsoft is also planning to develop its own original live-action television series that would be accessible through the Xbox. To stay ahead of the competition and to stay in the market they are also working with National Football League to develop an app for Xbox that would let players interact with their fantasy football teams while watching the live game.

From all this innovation that Microsoft is bringing in to the new Xbox, it is clearly evident that they are trying to do more with their consoles then just using them for gaming purposes.

Surely technology has come way forward then it was then Microsoft’s earlier product was launched eight years ago but do you think that will this affect the products life cycle? Will the mobile industry have drastic effect to gaming hardware systems like the Xbox, Nintendo, or PlayStation? Will innovation in their product similarly to what Microsoft has done will help them stay survive for a long time as it previous products?

Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/22/technology/xbox-one-faces-wider-range-of-competition.html?_r=0

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/24/paid-games-on-smartphones-to-outpace-handheld-consoles/

Picture:

Microsoft’s Xbox One gaming console.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

 

My Zynga! How does one fall so fast?

Posted on by spr1333mryan

Words With Friends. FarmVille. Scramble With Friends. We’ve all heard or played these games, or we have watched our friends on Facebook or Twitter interact with these games. These games are created by Zynga, a company that is nearly six years old based in San Francisco, California. This past week Zynga’s CEO Mark Pincus announced an 18% job cut for employees throughout the gaming company.

Who or what could possibly be the cause of such an 18% job cut? Pincus, in his blog announcement, acknowledged the fact that Zynga has struggled with adapting and entering the mobile space like many other companies. Larger companies, such as Facebook, have also admittedly publicly to have struggled to get a firm grasp on the market that caters to smaller devices that have smaller screens where users expect a fast, seamless and intuitive experience – with less ads. Is this lack of leadership on Pincus’? Or could it be Zynga’s lack of innovation?

This move to lean the company is certainly one thing – focusing on the future. By decreasing the size of the company today, Zynga was able to fairly compensate the newly departed associates. By making this move now, Pincus believes that Zynga is saving money in the long run. He believes making the deep cuts now will allow Zynga to take the risks it was once able to take before it expanded.

There are many similarities in this recent move by Zynga, and the the past few recent years of Chicago based, Groupon. These small start-up online companies expand exponentially all too quickly which brings up the questions, is it lack of leadership? One difference between Zynga and Groupon is that Pincus acknowledging the issues, and addressing them head on from the get go where as it can be argued that Groupon’s first CEO (yet to be replaced), Andrew Mason, failed to take the initiative to help his company early on. Mason, after months of criticism, left by similar fashion – a blog letter written to employees riddled with his off-based humor.

Companies that scale too quickly can easily lose their focus and their identity. Pincus is taking a risk to help his company in the long run. It is a difficult decision to make, but could potentially be the right one to correct Zynga’s projection path. Do think Pincus is making the right move?

http://blog.zynga.com/2013/06/03/ceo-update-4/

Coffee and Cigarettes, Minus the Cigarettes

Posted on by spr1333cshepherd

Coffee and cigarettes are hand-in-hand products, almost perfect complements to each other; both providing their users with deflated wallets and horrible breath. Walk around any city or town in the early morning and you will undoubtedly observe multiple people enjoying both vices concurrently. There have even be major films entitled ‘Coffee and Cigarettes’. In popular culture, the pair is like Ben and Jerry, Beef & Broccoli, Shoes and socks. Unlike those other relationships, coffee and cigarettes are not a unanimously accepted pair. There are definitely many coffee drinkers who find cigarette smokers repulsive, and perhaps vice versa. Still, with such an inherent blend in product culture, one would assume most coffee shops would welcome cigarette smokers to their establishment without limits. If a company really wanted to thrive, maybe they’d pursue a pack-and-mug combination, giving the fiends their fix in an orderly fashion. Yet Starbucks has recently implemented a polar opposite plan…

On June 1, 2013, Starbucks initiated their ban of smoking on premises. This policy, which prohibits patrons from smoking within 25 feet of a Starbucks establishment, will take affect company-wide immediately. According to the Wall Street Journal, “roughly 7,000 company-operated cafes in the US” have adopted this policy. This does not include “licensed stores” which are those locations found in larger establishments such as Barnes & Noble or Target. Many Starbucks locations contain outdoor seating areas, which provide space for customers to sprawl out, enjoy their coffee, the weather, and finish any pending work. These areas will officially be off-limits to cigarette smoke.

From an organizational standpoint this decision comes as quite a surprise. Although Starbucks consumers, and coffee drinkers for that matter, are primarily mobile customers; many enjoy the comforts of the establishment. As a company, Starbucks promotes itself as inviting and welcoming, allowing customers to make use of their Wi-Fi and use their stores as work sites. One should not presume that all coffee drinkers are cigarette smokers, yet it is a fairly safe assumption that those who consume both make up a rather significant portion of Starbucks’ client base. Starbucks is essentially alienating this faction of their customers through the implementation of this new policy. Many customers may suddenly feel unwelcomed at a place they once visited frequently. This policy states, on the surface, that those customers can take their business elsewhere, or buy their coffee and take it on the road. A Starbucks spokeswoman stated, “we take pride in providing a comfortable environment at our stores where customers and members of the community gather.” In an attempt to appease the community at large, (which is most commonly against smokers) the company has distanced itself from this portion of their customers. It is probably safe to assume that a corporation as prominent as Starbucks did the necessary market research prior to making such a bold decision, but that does not eliminate the chance that this choice could come with major backlash.

 

http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2013/05/31/put-out-your-cigarettes-at-starbucks-even-the-electronic-ones/

Ice Cold Beer Here! (in the U.S)

Posted on by spr1314wschulenberg

 

20-jp-BEER-tmagArticleHave you ever wondered, just how much it costs to import the “better quality” beer from around the world like Corona, Modelo or Heineken or where exactly does the beer I drink come from? Most likely you drink a product either made by or distributed by Anheuser-Busch and InBev (ABI) considering they currently have aver 39% of the market share for the American Beer Industry. But just recently ABI has taken actions that will give them a majority of the market share for the American Beer Industry, which includes a 20 billion dollar acquisition of the Groupo Modelo Beer Manufacturing Company of Mexico.  This includes expanding the company internationally to Sounth America and adding the brand names of Modelo, Dos Equis and Corona.  This merger was so large that the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the company in fear of them reaching a stage of monopoly and market leader.  The result of this was for ABI to sell a 50% share of Modelo’s share to the Constellation Corporation, who currently owns about 20% market share of the American Beer Market, for only $5.5 billion.  DOJ says that this will allow for less consolidation and more competition in price in the markets.

Rob Sands, president of the Constellation Corp. says that this is the most transformational deal in the company’s 86-year history. The results of this merger range in variety and benefit both ABI and Constellation.  ABI will now have 46% market share after the acquisition as well as gaining all rights over the Brand Corona and its factories in Mexico.  Granted that they Corona accounts for over 20% of beer sales in some regions ABI distributes to, they will being seeing substantial growth in capital output and profits in the coming years.  Constellation also stands to see a similar amount of growth in the coming years.  They have aquired the brand of Modelo. Constellation makes wines from Robert Mondavi and Clos du Bois, as well as Svedka Vodka. Although they have never brewed beer before Constellation is excited about this endeavor. They will build a new state of the art facility for brewing the Modelo brand on the Texas-Mexico border. This will result in the plants capacity doubling in a matter of a few months. How do you think that these actions will affect other beer manufactures output such as Miller Coor’s? Also how do you think that this acquisition will affect beer prices of domestic, imported and micro brew beer companies?

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/anheuser-busch-reaches-deal-with-antitrust-regulators/