BUS 377 Staryer University Competencies for Risk Managers Paper Read the nine mini-case study series from the Project Management Institute on the Global Gr

BUS 377 Staryer University Competencies for Risk Managers Paper Read the nine mini-case study series from the Project Management Institute on the Global Green Books Publishing company before starting this assignment. (mini case 1-9 click link below or copy/paste URL)

https://blackboard.strayer.edu/bbcswebdav/institution/BUS/BUS377/200100/Course_Files/cf_Mini_case_1_Global_Green_Books.pdf

https://blackboard.strayer.edu/bbcswebdav/institution/BUS/BUS377/200100/Course_Files/cf_Mini_case_2_Risks_at_Global_Green_Books.pdf

https://blackboard.strayer.edu/bbcswebdav/institution/BUS/BUS377/200100/Course_Files/cf_Mini_case_3_Defining_Standard_Projects_at_Global_Green_Books.pdf

https://blackboard.strayer.edu/bbcswebdav/institution/BUS/BUS377/200100/Course_Files/cf_Mini_case_4_Cost_Estimation_at_Global_Green_Books.pdf

https://blackboard.strayer.edu/bbcswebdav/institution/BUS/BUS377/200100/Course_Files/cf_Mini_case_5_Managing_Change_at_Global_Green_Books.pdf

https://blackboard.strayer.edu/bbcswebdav/institution/BUS/BUS377/200100/Course_Files/cf_Mini_case_6_Developing_Project_Managers_at_Global_Green_Books.pdf

https://blackboard.strayer.edu/bbcswebdav/institution/BUS/BUS377/200100/Course_Files/cf_Mini_case_7_Closing_Projects_at_Global_Green_Books.pdf

https://blackboard.strayer.edu/bbcswebdav/institution/BUS/BUS377/200100/Course_Files/cf_Mini_case_8_Team_Building_at_Global_Green_Books.pdf

https://blackboard.strayer.edu/bbcswebdav/institution/BUS/BUS377/200100/Course_Files/cf_Mini_case_9_Quality_Management_at_Global_Green_Books.pdf

Write a 3-page paper 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.
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.
No plagiarism
Locate at least two quality resources other than your textbook to use in this assignment. Note: Wikipedia and similar websites do not qualify as quality resources
NO PLAGIARISM
PLEAS BE SURE TO COMPLETE ALL THE REQUIREMENTS OR REFUND WILL BE REQUESTED Mini-Case Study: Managing Change at Global Green Books Publishing
Global Green Books Publishing is producing customized eBooks for a local college. It has just
received a large order for a new eBook on Strategic Human Resource Management in a Global
Context from a senior professor in the business school. This distinguished faculty member is
dissatisfied with the current textbooks, and wants a customized eBook for use with her oncampus courses, graduate seminars, and her executive education courses. This is the most
complex eBook that Global Green Books has undertaken. Because this project is so important
to the professor, and will be used in so many different settings with different schedules, the
professor made sure that she had her complete eBook request in early to allow sufficient time
for production. She had selected a broad set of the best papers and had written an introduction
and background, along with discussion questions for each section. This meant that this project
was going to have an extensive set of permissions to acquire before production could happen,
as well as a large amount of desktop publishing for the new materials written by the professor.
She was quite certain that she had given Global Green Books more than enough time to have
her eBook ready before the first class needed it.
This large eBook went through the check and verify order step with a bit of back and forth with
the professor to verify the information needed for the extensive number of permissions, so that
started the project off with a bit of a delay. Because there were so many permissions, the
Supervisor who planned this project, accelerated the work on obtaining permissions to make
sure that all the permissions were received before they needed to start assembling and collating
the eBook in production.
As the Publishers Liaison worked through the extensive list of permissions, the Customer
Service Representative for the business school at the college started receiving several inputs
from the college about this project. One set of inputs was a continuing series of requests from
the professor. As new papers were released, she wanted to make a number of additions to the
eBook. Also, as time went on and she had more time to review her eBook plans, she started
identifying some changes that she wanted to make to her planned eBook.
Another input came from the business manager at the college bookstore, as he was quite
concerned about the projected cost of this eBook. Because this eBook included so many
reprints of existing articles and chapters, the estimated cost of the book was quite high. The
college expected their eBooks to be delivered at a low cost, as its bookstore costs had to cover
the bookstore overhead (servers for sales and distribution of the eBooks and marketing costs)
and the bookstore’s markup, as well as the costs of the eBook from Global Green Books. The
Global Green Books costs had to incorporate all the permissions costs, as well as all of the
desktop publishing and production costs.
The Customer Service Representative communicated these issues to several people within
Global Green Books: the account manager for the college account, the supervisor managing
production for this eBook, the Publishers Liaison obtaining permissions for this book. The
account manager was concerned about upsetting this important customer, the supervisor didn’t
know how these various requests could all be accommodated or how it would impact his project,
and the Publishers Liaison was worried both about added costs for new permissions and the
time it would take to get them and the costs they had already expended for permissions no
longer needed.
And the professor’s requests just kept coming, at an increasing rate as it got closer to her
deadline for needing this eBook.
The supervisor was starting to make some estimates of what each change requested by the
professor would cost
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

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An extra $500 for each new permission needed, in addition to the $500 already spent for
each permission already acquired that can no longer be used
Two hours of Publishers Liaison effort for each new permission needed at an
unburdened cost of $22 per hour (loaded cost is $55 with a 1.5 overhead rate)
One hour of supervisor time for replanning each change at an unburdened cost of $28
per hour (loaded cost is $70 with a 1.5 overhead rate)
Sales commission of 20%
This continuing series of requests for changes from the professor is quickly adding to the
upwardly spiraling cost of this project. The supervisor feels that something must be done about
this scope creep – continually changing scope.
Comment on the following aspects of the case study:
a)
b)
c)
d)
Who are the stakeholders of this project? Who are the key stakeholders of the project?
What impacts could these requested changes have on the budget?
Could these requested changes also impact the schedule? If so, how?
What is Global Green Book’s process for dealing with changes from their customers?
Do you see any possible issues with this process?
e) How would you recommend that Global Green Books handle these changes? Who
should be involved?
f) What should Global Green Books do about the conflicting inputs from their customer –
the bookstore manager who wants inexpensive eBooks and the professor who wants the
best and most up-to-date collection of readings possible for her courses?
Mini-Case Study: Developing Project Managers at Global Green Books
Publishing
Global Green Books Publishing is continuing to grow. They now have three large customerstwo in traditional print-based work and the third is a local college. They produce customized
eBooks for this local college. This newest line of work is growing, as other customers hear of
their work, and the account managers are speaking with several other colleges and professional
associations about taking on additional projects in electronic publishing.
As they have grown, they have had to start implementing some project management concepts
to plan and manage their work. The founders hired Samantha as a project associate or project
manager on a full-time basis to help them introduce project management practices and help
them tide over the crisis they were experiencing with rapid growth. 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 a year, the company was
delivering projects on schedule, the quality processes worked—and customers were happy with
the products! This success was leading to possible new work and greater opportunities to bring
on new customers.
As the growth continued, Samantha was now feeling the pressure. She was only one person.
And there was so much more to still do.
Using her project management skills, she had implemented more formal project management
processes, created a PM manual and trained the employees to get the work done well. One
area where she especially felt stretched thin was in supporting the supervisors.
As the eBook business grew, there were more and more demands on the supervisors. Many
were great print technicians who had caught the eye of the founders for their attitudes and
customer service ethic. But today, they were being called on to do more complex tasks than
merely running a highly automated print copier. Supervisors are interacting with customers, as
well as with internal account managers and customer service representatives. They are
managing employees with a diverse set of skills, backgrounds, and motivations. It is
increasingly hard for them to ask employees to take on hard challenges when they themselves
do not have those skills and have not done the eBook publishing that the business is
increasingly moving to.
Many of the supervisors have had a bit of project management mentoring from Samantha, but
still know that they have to be both leaders and managers. As project teams come together to
work on eBooks, there are challenges. Some of the challenges have to do with knowing the
status of the work, as part-time employees come in and hand a piece of a project off to another
worker. Some deal managing conflicts as they arise – both technical issues as permissions are
delayed and content cannot yet be incorporated, leading to scheduling changes, and interpersonal issues among staff. Some of these conflicts occur between a mostly young, part-time
contingent of student workers and the full-time employees. Supervisors are often drawn into
mediating or resolving these conflicts. They really need to meld together their staff to create
highly capable, productive project teams for these fast-paced eBook projects. The staff needs to
trust each other and their leadership to be fair and to balance work priorities with the times that
they are available.
Supervisors need to provide leadership, to provide inspiration for their team, and to be good
motivators of their team members, as well as be a good manager, worrying about the day-today and minute-by-minute accomplishment of the project’s goals. Being a good motivator also
means that the supervisors must be good listeners to understand what issues are confronting
their team members and the needs of their team members.
The supervisors were realizing that as a group they needed two things. One was a greater
grasp of people skills, or so-called “soft” skills, to help make them more effective. The other
was more support in project management as they needed to better track the details of the work,
and the task level scheduling and rescheduling that was happening as team members come
and go for their work shifts and as permissions sometimes take longer to obtain than planned.
Samantha is starting to discuss with her management and with the human resources and
training group how they can meet some of these needs. Perhaps some leadership development
training for supervisors could be arranged. And she is talking with her management about
setting up a project management office (PMO) to have project management staff available to
help the supervisors with some of their work tracking and scheduling challenges. She hopes
that addressing these two issues will make their eBook delivery much smoother.
Comment on the following aspects of the case study:
a) What are some of the challenges facing supervisors?
b) What skills do you think the supervisors need to be effective project managers? Why do
they need these skills?
c) Are there skills that team members need to be effective team members in a project? If
so, what are these skills?
d) Which characteristic or skill do you think is the most significant characteristic of an
effective project manager?
e) What steps could project managers take to help make their teams more effective?
f) What advice would you give Samantha about setting up a project management office?
What roles could these staff perform, and how could they interact with the existing
projects?
g) Can you describe other ways that this PMO function could be organized?
Mini-Case Study: Closing Projects at Global Green Books Publishing
Global Green Books Publishing is continuing to grow. The customized eBooks line of work is
continuing to grow, and they now have a lot of experience from the eBook projects that they
have completed for their first eBook customer, a local college, and for their newer customers.
However, as new projects come in and start to run into problems, some of the project managers
in the project management office and their manager, Samantha, were discussing how it seems
like it is déjà vu all over again – some of the same problems that they thought they had solved in
working with supervisors and their teams on past projects keep on occurring.
The eBook projects are functioning well, and customers are happy with the results. Repeat
orders are coming in and new customers are turning to Global Green Books for their eBook
production needs.
But, there are just some problems that seem to keep popping up. One of the project managers
even described dealing with these problems as being like playing the popular arcade game of
“Whack-a-Mole” – as soon as you deal with one to make it disappear, the same one or another
one just pops up. It seems like a never-ending struggle to try and solve some of these
problems, especially when some seem like they were already solved on another earlier project.
In the PM handbook that Samantha had implemented, when projects completed the supervisors
finished tracking all of the actual effort and costs and turned that information over to cost
accounting for billing purposes. As Samantha and colleagues implemented the project
management office, they modified the PM manual to have a copy of this information also shared
with the project management office. They have found this information to be sometimes useful
as historical data to help develop estimates for new projects as requests for new eBooks come
in from their customers.
The PMO team was discussing making changes to the PM manual and holding a short training
for supervisors to implement some improvements to their project completion processes. They
wanted to change their standard job template to incorporate these additions:
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a planned task for supervisors to close out the project,
a task to create a lessons learned report, and
an optional task for a closing celebration for the team to mark the end of the project,
They felt that it was important that the PMO start capturing lessons learned. These could be
collated by the supervisors at the end of the project, or they could encourage supervisors to
plan, schedule and hold a project closing meeting with their team members to thank the team
members and to collect lessons learned from all of the team. They could also invite feedback or
participation from the relevant Customer Service Representatives and account managers.
The PMO received management approval for these changes, updated the PM manual, and held
a brief training for supervisors. Supervisors liked the ideas, especially because the close-out
meeting or team celebration would give them a chance to recognize and reward team members
and would serve to motivate the teams for future projects. As time went on, the PMO started
collecting these lessons learned from many projects.
As they collected these lessons learned from these projects, the PMO staff started to look at the
data from the lessons learned across the projects. They examined frequency of the six kinds of
issues that were being encountered on the projects. The histogram below shows their results.
Based on feedback from the leadership training that they had done with the supervisors, they
had thought that the major cause of delays and extra costs on projects were part-time student
employees calling off from work at the last minute, leaving planned work not performed until
another resource could be assigned to it, which was often difficult as there were few slack
resources. This made tasks late and sometimes delayed projects from completing on time.
Their analysis showed that that wasn’t the case at all. In fact only three of the problems on
projects were caused by unplanned absences. In their Pareto analysis, the PMO staff identified
three key problems, which they highlighted in red. Delays in obtaining necessary reprint
permissions from certain publishers were the largest cause of problems, accounting for 34% of
the problems encountered by eBook projects. Production staff calling in sick was the next most
frequent problem, accounting for 28% of the problems. Customer changes, which often caused
rework and delays, were the root cause of another 20% of the problems.
The PMO now knew what the most important issues were that were causing eBook projects to
be delayed, and could make recommendations to mitigate each of these problems.
Comment on the following aspects of the case study:
a) What are some of the reasons why it is important to close out a project? What can
project managers accomplish in closing out a project?
b) Why should projects capture lessons learned? What are some ways that the project
team members, project managers and the organization can use lessons learned?
c) What benefits come from celebrating project accomplishments? Do you believe that
rewards and recognition can serve as motivators for staff?
d) Explain what a Pareto chart is. Why would you use this technique to identify and
prioritize problem areas? Are there some limitations on interpreting the results of a
Pareto analysis?
e) If you were the PMO looking at this Pareto analysis, what recommendations might you
make to address the three key problem areas in eBook projects that this analysis
identified?
Mini-Case Study: Team Building at Global Green Books Publishing
Global Green Books Publishing is continuing to grow. As their eBook business continues to
drive that growth, they now are continuing to add staff to be able to keep up with customer
demand. Most all of the new people and many of the eBook staff have not worked together in
the original print-based business area of the company, and indeed are new to the company and
its culture.
These new employees have a diverse set of skills, backgrounds, and motivations. Their
supervisors know how to manage their projects, but do not always have the expertise to step in
and do each of the unique tasks assigned to team members. Most of the employees that have
been around since the beginning of the eBook business have been trained in their project
management techniques, so they can get the work done well; but not all of the newer
employees have had this training. There is just too much work that needs to be done to take
time out for training.
Supervisors need provide leadership, to provide inspiration for their team and to be good
motivators of their team members, as well as be a good manager, worrying about the day-today and minute-by-minute accomplishment of the project’s goals. Being a good motivator also
means that the supervisors must be good listeners to understand what issues are confronting
their team members and the needs of their team members.
Beyond this role as leaders, supervisors need to be a good manager. They need to identify the
skills that they need for their projects. Supervisors at Global Green Books normally do this as
they start from the standard job template for eBook projects and build the Work Breakdown
Structure (WBS) for their eBook project. Next, they need to identify team members that have
those skills, and work with their current project managers and with human resources to make
sure that they will be available to support the new project. Based on the lessons learned
analyses, a supervisor might also identify a person as a back-up for a critical role on the project,
in case they run into difficulties or assigned staff are not available as planned.
Once the team is assembled, challenges can arise. Some of the challenges teams face have to
do with knowing the status of the work, as part-time employees come in and hand a piece of a
project off to another worker. Some deal managing conflicts as they arise – both technical
issues as permissions are delayed and content cannot yet be incorporated, leading to
scheduling changes, and inter-personal issues among staff. Some of these conflicts occur
between a mostly young, part-time contingent of student workers and the full-time employees.
Supervisors are often drawn into mediating or resolving these conflicts. They really need to
meld together their staff to create highly capable, productive project teams for these fast-paced
eBook projects. The staff needs to trust each other and their leadership to be fair and to balance
work priorities with the times that they are available.
Supervisors are finding it is very important to make sure every team member understands the
goals of the project, the roles of each team member and how they inter-relate, and …
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