BUS 377: managing project riskRead the nine mini-case study series from the Project Management Institute on the Global Green Books Publishing company before starting this assignment. Write a 4 page...

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BUS 377: managing project riskRead the nine mini-case study series from the Project Management Institute on the Global Green Books Publishing company before starting this assignment.

Write a 4 page paper ( not including cover and reference page) in which you:



  • Discuss at least three challenges that project managers face as effective risk managers at Global Green Books Publishing and provide a rationale for your choices. Look at Chapter 2 ofPractical Project Risk Managementto review the most common challenges.

  • Discuss at least three key skills/competencies project managers need to be effective risk managers at Global Green Books Publishing and provide a rationale for your choices.

  • locate at least two quality resources to use in this assignment. Note: Wikipedia and similar websites do not qualify as quality resources.



  • This course requires the use of Strayer Writing Standards. For assistance and information, please refer to the Strayer Writing Standards link in the left-hand menu of your course. Check with your professor for any additional instructions.


    The specific course learning outcome associated with this assignment is:



    • Examine the competencies and skills needed for effective risk management based on challenges at a given company.










Mini-Case Study: 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 texts—time and money was being spent fixing defects in their products  unable to control costs—their 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 skills—she 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 worked—and customers were happy with the products! Comment on the following aspects of the case study: a) Why did Global Green Books Publishing struggle? b) What were the specific PM solutions that were introduced by Samantha that worked? c) What kind of suggestions would you give to Brad and Jim if you were the PM? d) Are you aware of other similar start-up businesses that struggle in a similar manner? How did they overcome the challenges? e) Global Green Books Publishing is a technology intensive business, but Samantha is not technically knowledgeable, will she continue to be a successful project manager? Mini-Case Study: The Back to School Crunch at Global Green Books Publishing Global Green Books Publishing is a successful printing and publishing company. Just two years old, it has taken on a great new customer, a local college that needs customized eBooks. To deal with this new customer, they have hired several new part time employees to help them with their publishing business, some of them students at the college with flexible hours. As the new school year drew closer, the orders started coming in. They had been told how many different printing jobs the college would need, but they weren’t all arriving at once, and orders were quite unpredictable in arriving from the professors at the college. Some professors needed rush orders for their classes. When Global Green Books finally got the orders, some of these jobs were much larger than they had thought they would be. Printing these orders turned out to be very challenging. Not all of the new student hires were trained for all of the printing and binding equipment used to print and assemble to books. Some of them often made mistakes, some workers called off from work due to other demands, and there were often not enough people available to get all the work done before deadlines. Quality was a serious issue, as they had to provide quality texts—if there were quality problems with the printed product, they would have to spend time and money to fixing defects in their products. Deliveries started slipping past their requested dates and times. Global Green Books was unable to deliver eBooks to their customers on schedule. 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. Samantha had been hired as a project management assistant. In her new role as a project manager, one of the processes she was trying to institute was risk management. She started looking at what was happening in the business, talking about it with the owners and employees, and heard about the college’s unhappiness. As she did this, she started identifying risks and potential risks. As she went along, she started doing more proactive risk analysis and risk response planning, and as she did surprises and issues were reduced. By talking with stakeholders and addressing their concerns, communication with stakeholders was also enhanced. Comment on the following aspects of the case study: a) What risks can you identify? Why are they a risk to Global Green Books Publishing? b) What kind of impacts does each of your identified risks have? Can you categorize these as low impact, medium impact, or high impact? c) How probable are each of your identified risks? You can think about something simple like categorizing these as not very likely, likely, and highly likely to occur. d) What would you advise Global Green Books are their three most critical risks? e) What would you suggest that they do about these three risks? Are there specific actions to deal with these risks? Have you identified a contingency plan to carry out if the risk occurs? Mini-Case Study: Defining Standard Projects at Global Green Books Publishing Global Green Books Publishing is a successful printing and publishing company in its third year. It has survived the bringing on a large new customer and all the challenges of new work that this customer needed in a very short time. Much of this work for the college is customized eBooks. As the first term progressed with Global Green Books making customized eBooks for this college, there were a number of issues that affected the quality of the eBooks produced and caused a great deal of rework for the company. The local university was unhappy as their eBook products sometimes reached campus late for use by professors and student. In some cases, the books were a week or two late. The management of Global Green Books was also challenged by these projects. The college expected them delivered on-time and at a low cost, and the company was not always doing that. Accounting was having difficult tracking the costs for each of the books, and the shift supervisor were often having problems knowing what tasks needed to be completed and assigning the right employees to each task. Some of the problems stemmed from the new part time employees. Since many of these workers had flexible schedules, it wasn’t always clear which tasks they were supposed to be working on when they came in to work. Each book being produced was indeed a book; but that was all they had in common. Each book had different production steps, different contents and reprint approvals required, and different layouts and cover designs. Some were just collections of articles to reprint once approvals were received, and others required extensive desktop publishing. Each eBook was a complex process, but was going to be made just once, as these eBooks were all customized for each professor and course each semester. Each eBook had to be produced on time, and had to be made to match just exactly what the professors requested. Understanding what each eBook needed had to be clearly documented and understood before starting production. Global Green Books had been told by the college how many different printing jobs the college would need, but they weren’t all arriving at once, and orders were quite unpredictable in arriving from the professors at the college. Some professors needed rush orders for their classes. Some orders arrived as projected, but some came later than anticipated. When Global Green Books finally got all their orders, some of these jobs were much larger than they had thought they would be. Each eBook needed to have a separate job order prepared that listed all the steps that needed to be completed, so that tasks
Answered 1 days AfterAug 27, 2021

Answer To: BUS 377: managing project riskRead the nine mini-case study series from the Project Management...

Neha answered on Aug 28 2021
126 Votes
2
ORGANIZATONAL CULTURE        2
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Three challenges of project managers
The challenges of the company follow:
Unskilled employees
As Global Book Publishing started with very little resources, they hired part time workers or freelances. Some of their employ
ees were college students who wanted to have some job. That is why, the company lacked the numbers of skilled workers who can take the job professionally. The founders of the company did not expect the work load and they have underestimated their potentiality for the business. Therefore, the workers could not deal with the bulk orders that the company received. Most of the workers being freelance students of colleges, did not have the professional background where they can manage the work skilfully.
The professors of the colleges wanted the books at a designated time. Nut the company could not deliver the bulk amount at such period. They were not trained with the speed of work or use of the techniques that many other publishers use for meeting the target. Poorly skilled workers have lost many of their orders and it affected in their overall business and the amount of work that they have been doing for establishing the business (Henkel, Marion Jr & Bourdeau, 2019). The image of the company has also been deteriorated for the unskilled and unprofessional work they have provided.
Missing deadlines of publication
    Company has constantly failed to deliver the orders on the given timeline. When it comes to book publication and delivering it to a particular educational institution, deadline is a very serious matter. Books required at the beginning of the semester so that the students can study. The educational institution had given the responsibility to Global Book Publication for all of the students. That is why it was their responsibility to deliver the orders within the given time in the beginning of the semester. Due to the poor management of the Publication House the employees could not deliver the product within the timeline (Alvarenga et al., 2017). The founders of the publication underestimated their progress and to the bulk of order without further speculation. Since the company lacks number of employees, skilful labours and the potentiality to deliver the orders within a deadline, the company has seen massive degradation in their quality of work. With the increasing the quantity of their orders the quality heavily degraded and it affected in the overall image of the company. The quality of the orders was not only related to the quality of pages and printed products but it also affected the quality of the contents inside. This is the reason the company test some serious challenges that undermined their business....
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