Project Management Cycle Phases

Discuss about the International Project Management for American Management Association.

The study presented aims at discussing the problems which the Airbus A380 and the Boeing 787 Dreamliner would face while managing their international projects. Due to globalization, more and more companies are coming forward to expand their businesses beyond borders. The organization should have its focus on selecting the appropriate managers who are flexible enough to adapt to the changing conditions.  The manager of an international project has to have special skills to handle the logistic, language, customer’s choice, and language issues (Heagney, 2012).   According to Koster, the organizations which excel at the successfully carrying out the international operations have their focus on molding the leaders with sufficient training, supporting the managers at all levels etc.  The international projects are usually quite risky and costly, so the manager has to come up with the effective strategies to minimize the cost and optimize the available opportunities. Moreover, the company has to formulate strict quality control measures for its overseas projects. In this study, the challenges faced by the Airbus A380 & The Boeing 787 Dreamliner are discussed along with a few recommendations to optimize those challenges of the overseas project. 

Project management cycle is the process or the framework which helps the managers in the successful delivery of the projects. The entire process can be divided into four phases, namely- project initiation, project planning, project execution and project closure. Each step has its own purpose and attaining each step is very important in the fulfillment of the goal of the cycle. Project phases are related to each other in a cyclic manner rather than in a linear manner.  The project closure phase is also known as the project monitoring phase. After the close monitoring of the project, the monitoring department informs the planning and executing departments to make the additional changes until the project is deliverable (Maltzman & Shirley, 2011). In this way, an effective cycle goes on and on. The companies fail to meet the investor’s expectations due to lack of project performance and thus they lose out on investments.  Proper Project management ensures effective communication channels and helps to remove barriers within the communication channel s, preventing loss of investments of the organization. 

In this phase of the project management cycle, a plan is proposed which is then authorized and funded as a project by the management of the company.  Planning includes the objectives and the scope of the project being explained by the organization and a team is put together with skilled people.  During the initiation phase, a diagnostic analysis is done on the problems of the project and the strategies are explained which can be used in the project to be benefitted from them.  Thus this phase includes brainstorming to come up with ideas to solve the problems or grab an opportunity (Heagney, 2012).

Challenges Faced by Boeing 787 Dreamliner

As we can see in both the case studies, both the companies have issues regarding their international projects. The Boeing Company understood that their customer experience in the aircraft needed improvement. So they developed an idea of building a completely new aircraft which would be both economical and will improve the customer experience as well. The company wanted to capture the aircraft market with this idea and their latest technology. To achieve this goal they tried to do a lot of outsourcing but they failed to understand and test the need and the quality of products which the subcontractors would bring into the project (Heerkens, 2015). The company opened itself up to several outsourcing risks as they increased their outsourcing levels as a result of which the control of the project managers also decreased.  The company faced several safety and quality issues as a result of outsourcing which was also linked to several unlikeable corporate behaviors.  The company conducted a feasibility study regarding the lithium-ion battery technology but it did not perform as the company expected.

The Airbus A380 proposed a plan of building a superjumbo jet. The company was backed up by a consortium of companies for this project. The project failed in its initial stage due to its delays which proved to be quite costly for the firm and the company lost many of their loyal customers. The company failed to understand the different organizational cultures from the different countries such as British, France, Spain and Germany (Griffin et al., 2014). 

The next step is planning, once the proposal has been authorized and the funds have been approved the planning part starts. This step is the first step in the development of all plans; this part includes two distinct components- the development of plans which are a part of the main proposal i.e. core planning and the plans which manage the implementation of the project i.e facilitating planning

Core planning-. The core plans include a detailed planning of the plans that were initially produced as a part of the project. The project manager’s first job is to develop the project plans including the objectives, scope, budget and the schedule of the project (Lipczynski, 2008).

Facilitating planning- facilitating plans include the planning of all the facilities, procedures which help to develop and the smooth running of the project. Detailed planning of the project helps to discover the faults in the project proposal during the initial stage of the project proposal (Lewis, 2007).

Challenges Faced by Airbus A380

The Boeing Company successfully made their list of requirements such as the carbon fiber, titanium and aluminum were supposed to be used in the making of the aircraft to improve the flying experience. The firm also made several attempts to minimize the fuel prices and the number of stopovers between destinations. The company, however, failed to effectively manage its team especially due to the necessity of outsourcing. The team also failed in terms of making innovations to the aircraft due to the involvement of several new technologies which were not priory used in an aircraft. They used new electrical systems, distributions and power panels in the aircraft without having any prior knowledge about them (Ferrell, Hirt & Ferrell, 2013).

The Airbus A380 did not fail in its planning phase but their failure was due to lack of teamwork and coordination within the members of the consortium. The companies in the consortium did not cooperate with each other as a result of which there was a communication breakdown. The company failed to understand the organizational cultural differences that affected the performance and the production of the company, resulting in the continuous delays. A huge technical complexity was caused due to the interference of various management teams; the teams were incompatible resulting in delays. The division of labor across countries also affected the performance of their international project (Lientz, 2015).

Execution includes taking all the necessary actions to be taken to ensure the proper outcome of the project. This phase occurs when the final project has been approved by the company and the project manager has created a dream team and has started off with the initial processes. The initial processes may include the office vehicles, the office furniture, and equipment etc. required to start off the project. In other terms execution can be understood as coordinating people and other resources to inculcate the desired outcomes of the project; in this phase project leadership, developing the team, verifying the project scope and other necessary actions are taken (Aktins, 2012).

Boeing 787 project got off on the wrong foot when it comes to the execution of the plans, as due to the lack of coordination among the project managers; the project lacked overseeing by the project managers during the execution stage. So there were coordination risks faced while executing the project. The incompatibility of the outsourced products was another reason for the problems in the execution of the project (Lipczynski, 2008).

Importance of Project Feasibility Study

In the case of the Airbus A380, the company failed to delegate and coordinate the consortium. Thus, the project was delayed (Avadhani, 2010). 

Monitoring is about comparing the progress rate of the project against the plans made at the beginning of the project. Monitoring runs in all the phases of the management cycle. Project monitoring is the constant checking on the project to see if the project is on its right track and in its right place and in the right budget. Thorough monitoring can open up new opportunities for improvement for the project. Monitoring comes with another aspect i.e. controlling. Controlling is basically taking corrective measures in the times of need. Modification in each and every step reduces the chances of failures and improves the project (Peng., 2013).

The Boeing 787 Company conducted a test to ensure the quality of the product manufactured. During the process, they discovered several technical issues with the aircraft such as a fire was caused in the aircraft due to the overheating of the lithium-ion batteries. After the quality control test was completed the project manager addressed that the problems arose from the outsourcing technology. Thus, it can be concluded that the company did not monitor the project in its every phase (Binder, 2016).

On the other hand, the challenges faced by the Airbus A380 could not be understood until the project failed to meet the deadlines. The project managers did not identify the core reasons in the execution process which was behind the delay of the entire process (Maltzman & Shirley, 2011).

A project feasibility study was significantly important for both the companies which were skipped by the project managers. The project feasibility study is an important part of the project management cycle to ensure proper execution and implementation.  In the Boeing case, this study could have helped in identifying the overheating problems of the lithium-ion batteries, coordination issues among the partners in the project and the outsourcing risks. The company also risked using a new technology in the aircraft (Williams, 2013). Conducting a feasibility study on time could have helped in understanding the viability of the technology to be used in the aircraft. The Airbus A380 also faced a quite similar problem, for instance, the lack of coordination in the consortium formed with the existing companies; they could apply the same feasibility test to understand their issues.

The international projects are usually linked with the challenge of facing cultural barriers from the host nations. The cultural understanding of both the Boeing 787 and the Airbus A380 helped them to establish themselves in the international markets successfully. The fact that both the companies would be working facing the same problem brought them on the same stand. The expectations of the different leaders of the consortium differed as they had different rules for different relationships as well as different regulations for the working processes (Peng., 2013). Failure to observe the different cultures creates a cultural gap and it affects the performance of the company. Communication and collaboration between the two different countries get hindered due to the difference in language, different laws and different lifestyles of the people.

Conclusion

The companies discussed in this study both should look into their coordination and communication techniques as these were the main issues behind the failure of these two projects although they were well funded and the extensive planning behind these two projects was quite substantial. The Boeing 787 Company made a huge blunder by completely focusing on the minimization of the costs by outsourcing the maximum products required to build the project. As a result of which the team on whom the responsibility of building the aircraft was vested used those technologies in the aircraft without having any prior knowledge about them (Mehta, 2007). The constant interference from the outsourcing parties caused technical delays in the project. The Airbus A380 did not make similar mistakes like the Boeing 787. The main problem in the working of the Airbus A380 was their communication issues between the companies in the consortium.  The managers in the company did not make any effort to understand the organizational cultures of those different companies as a result of which the entire project fell apart (Heldman, 2011).  

References 

Aktins, A. (2012). The project. North Sydney, N.S.W.: Random House Australia.

Avadhani, V. (2010). Global business. Mumbai [India]: Himalaya Pub. House.

Binder, J. (2016). Global project management. London: Routledge.

Ferrell, O., Hirt, G., & Ferrell, L. (2013). Business. Boston: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

Griffin, R., Ebert, R., Starke, F., Dracopoulos, G., & Lang, M. (2014). Business. Toronto: Pearson Canada.

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Heldman, K. (2011). Project management jumpstart. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Lewis, J. (2007). Fundamentals of project management. New York: American Management Association.