The traditional project execution strategy at Teradyne lacked planning, clear goals and scope, well-defined milestones, and project tracking. It resulted in scope creep and poor visibility for senior management.
The approach used for the Jaguar project implemented a phase gate model with reviews, work breakdown structure, estimates, critical path analysis, and earned value analysis. It formed a core team and conducted post-project reviews. This provided better planning, tracking, oversight, and accountability than the traditional approach.
However, the project management tools added effort and were challenging to modify as plans evolved. Some saw them as a distraction. As a result, some manipulated the plans and metrics rather than focusing on the project. Teradyne
The traditional project execution strategy at Teradyne lacked planning, clear goals and scope, well-defined milestones, and project tracking. It resulted in scope creep and poor visibility for senior management.
The approach used for the Jaguar project implemented a phase gate model with reviews, work breakdown structure, estimates, critical path analysis, and earned value analysis. It formed a core team and conducted post-project reviews. This provided better planning, tracking, oversight, and accountability than the traditional approach.
However, the project management tools added effort and were challenging to modify as plans evolved. Some saw them as a distraction. As a result, some manipulated the plans and metrics rather than focusing on the project. Teradyne
The traditional project execution strategy at Teradyne lacked planning, clear goals and scope, well-defined milestones, and project tracking. It resulted in scope creep and poor visibility for senior management.
The approach used for the Jaguar project implemented a phase gate model with reviews, work breakdown structure, estimates, critical path analysis, and earned value analysis. It formed a core team and conducted post-project reviews. This provided better planning, tracking, oversight, and accountability than the traditional approach.
However, the project management tools added effort and were challenging to modify as plans evolved. Some saw them as a distraction. As a result, some manipulated the plans and metrics rather than focusing on the project. Teradyne
The traditional project execution strategy at Teradyne lacked planning, clear goals and scope, well-defined milestones, and project tracking. It resulted in scope creep and poor visibility for senior management.
The approach used for the Jaguar project implemented a phase gate model with reviews, work breakdown structure, estimates, critical path analysis, and earned value analysis. It formed a core team and conducted post-project reviews. This provided better planning, tracking, oversight, and accountability than the traditional approach.
However, the project management tools added effort and were challenging to modify as plans evolved. Some saw them as a distraction. As a result, some manipulated the plans and metrics rather than focusing on the project. Teradyne
Compare & contrast Teradyne's traditional project execution strategy to
the approach it used in Jaguar? What was similar? What was different? Traditional Project Execution Strategy 1. Poor Planning 2. Goals and scope not clearly defined when project starts, this always leads to scope creep. 3. Milestones are not well defined 4. No systematic method for tracking project progress 5. Very less visibility for senior management. They have involved only when things getting very worse. There is no way to identify the issues before it getting very worse. 6. There are many functions which are participated in a project. Hence nobody has an ownership for making the whole project a success. Everybody concentrated on their piece of work. Project execution strategy in Jaguar 1. Phase gate Model: Well defined milestone and review points. 2. Implementation of project management for planning and tracking progress in a better way a. Work Breakdown Structure b. 3-Point estimate c. Critical Path analysis d. Earned value analysis 3. Once the project is completed conducted sessions to share the learnings to make sure continuous improvement is done. 4. Core team was formed to make sure the project progressing well. This is one of the flows in their current project execution strategy. 5. Proper questioning is done if the milestones are met or work progress is not as per the intended time lines. Respective owner has to give a valid explanation. 6. Another point is even all the tools and progress racking in place the behaviour of the people to overcommit continued in Jaguar project as well. 2. What impact did the project management tools have on the Jaguar project? Specifically, how did they change behaviour? How did they influence performance? 1. Before making the plan it becomes important to define the scope and objectives to create WBS and milestone. Which they haven done earlier. 2. It has a positive impact from a project tracking and management perspective 3. Tools forced to be systematic in action which is not the one liked by many of the engineers. Hence leads to waste lot of time thinking on if the tool is not there what would have been done rather than thinking on how to leverage the capability of the tools. 4. Rather than functions entire project comes to the focus for everybody and an urge align their actions with holistic view.
5.
3. What were the unintended consequences of using the project
management tools? What lessons should Teradyne take away from the Jaguar project? 1. It adds lot of effort for people to enter the details into the tool due to poor user interface. Many people see the tools as a distraction. 2. Sometimes as project progress it might need to tweak the plans little bit. But the tool makes it very challenging to do the changes. 3. People started to modify the plan to make sure things are intact. 4. People started managing the metric rather than the project Lessons Learned: 1. More training on the tool to make sure that all are familiar with it. 2. Senior management need to react to the data given by tool. In the Jaguar project even when the EV of software development is 50% nobody give more attention to it. Hence the management need to take actions based on the data given by the tool.