Client Background

Fujitsu has based its information and technologies service and equipment facilitating multi-national company, which recorded annual revenue of over 35$ billion in 2020. Fujitsu has been long motivated to develop project management skills among a class of university students and graduates, putting them in a training program for general business management for two years. The company has been training the participants focusing on general skills and concepts like time management and leadership.  

Fujitsu has been looking to develop a significant flexible coaching and training programme based on their three pillars of “structured learning, experiential rotations and learning from others. The training program should span five years of the specific participant’s career. The framework of the new training programme is based on the 70-20-10 model used for learning and development. The 70-20-10 model is a popular method used to build participants’ knowledge by being specific. The model describes 70% learning from the on-job experience, 20% learning from friends, family and colleagues and 10% from formal training programs and experiences (Bagley 2018). The project developed should represent the value of money, facilitate adequate understanding and be in place within the next employee intake in the organisation.    

The learning and development training program needs specific approaches to be followed for proper management of the project. Project management is necessary to create shared value and continuous improvement for the organisation by standardisation, structure and organise work methods (Tereso et al. 2019). The specific approaches selected for the project are the Agile approach, Lean Six Sigma approach and critical path approach.

The agile methodology involves continuous evaluation and collaboration with the stakeholders at every stage of managing a project. It is an iterative process used in project management, allowing responsive changes and feedback to reach business objectives adhering to the budget and timeframe of the project (Žužek et al. 2020). The specific approach for the training project starts implementing the Agile approach with setting the vision or scope of the project by using a planned meeting. The project objective is clearly defined at the beginning of the project. Flexibility is allowed from the beginning with a proper feedback and changes to be identified. The planned meeting is done with a focus on their target participants, the need of the project, the type of approach, key benefits, competitive alternatives and the final project statement. The second step involves building a roadmap for the execution of the project, focusing on their vision. Planning should be done efficiently and quickly, identifying, estimating and prioritising the time, effort and budget needed in every step of the project, making it viable. The traditional model fixated the implementation of the project to be done after completion.

Project Brief

However, agile management helps develop short cycles of development called the sprints, releasing parts of the project at the end of each step (Al-Saqqa, Sawalha and AbdelNabi 2020). The beginning of the sprints and releases of the project during development needs high levels of release planning done in the third place. In the fourth stage, the sprints needed to be planned accordingly, introducing short project development cycles in which specific objectives and tasks are carried out. The fifth stage involves daily tracking of stand-ups, which are time-boxed, short sessions where the project management team members set the contexts and take a stand for coming work, checking there is no roadblock in the project (Crofoot 2020). Finally, the sprint cycles must be reviewed as short pieces of the project getting implemented for use (Schmitt and Hörner 2021). The sprints are a source of viable information; thus, the retrospective is needed to learn from the sprints in the system.     

The training project introduced to the organisation can also be managed using the Six Sigma approach. Along with the continuous improvement in the processes, offering facilities and tools for reducing variable factors, reducing defects, and identifying the root reasons for error occurrence. The approach helps set up project management methodology for systematic identification of errors and facilitates approaches for their removal. The process of six Sigma in a project starts with the formation of a burning platform that would generate the motivation needed for continuous improvement (Kregel and Coners 2018).

The managers need to understand how problems can be addressed in the platform. The resource planning by the manager doesn’t ensure successful deployment; however, it identifies the requirements needed for the specific project, ensuring them to work as a team and empowering them for carrying out the training intervention. The methodology needs to be understood by the participants and the project management members, increasing organisational awareness by sharing similar ideas related to the business goals and objectives. The specific important activities in the project are specified with listening to the participants identifying the critical-to-quality criteria and metrics (Antony 2018). The ownership of the six sigma project management team is specified for taking responsibility for the team. Next, the managers need to create measuring systems for determining baseline performances and the need for resources for decision making with analysis of the factors of variation (Haerizadeh 2019). The measurements are required to the cost of quality of the intervention right directly reflecting the idea of “value for money”. The measurements should be fast-paced and flexible, paying attention to the critical metrics. The higher management governs the project to ensure the project is adhering to the vision discussed. There are scopes for rewards, recognition and incentives to motivate the team members during the whole project.  

Project Management approach and application

The critical path method is another approach used in project management where the critical tasks are identified accordingly as their priority attached with determining the flexibility of the project’s schedule and completion. The critical path is termed the longest sequence of required activities that should be completed within a given deadline or schedule to complete the whole project (Mishra 2020). The critical tasks cannot be delayed as they directly affect the rest of the project. The critical path approach starts with collecting all the activities required in the final deployment to the training intervention. The dependencies among the activities were identified according to the team members’ judgment and feedback. Next, the managers must create a network diagram specifying the critical tasks describing the chronology of the listed tasks in the project (Radkevych 2019). The task duration of each activity occurring must be estimated to calculate the project’s critical path. The manager uses the critical path algorithm to identify the critical path. The algorithm contains two passes, forward and backward.

The forward pass estimates the duration of every activity to determine the earliest starting and finishing point. The backward pass calculates the late starting and late finishing dates. Slacks and floats are the flexibility in a given activity, indicating how much a task can be delayed without directly impacting other tasks or project completion dates (Kenney 2021). Critical tasks must have zero floats or flexibility as the deadlines are set for project completion. The activities with positive slack numbers belonging to the non-critical path can be delayed and not directly impact the project’s end. The final critical path is derived from the tasks with zero floats, and the tasks with positive floats are parallel to the critical activities. All the critical activities are related, except the project’s first critical activity.

The three selected approaches taken for the specific program/project of training for Fujitsu Company are the agile approach, lean six sigma approach and the critical path approach.

The agile methodology in the project management approach is an iterative approach for promoting adaptability and velocity, allowing continuous development for creating shared value for the enterprise. The Agile methodology has much application to building a responsive, flexible and adaptive project. The methodology helps satisfy the customers through the continuous and early development of the project and proper delivery of the services. Continuous improvement allows for changing requirements even if it is late in the project and adaptive (Janssen and Van der Voort 2020). The values are shared frequently through using sprints delivering parts of the projects within a shorter timeline. The agile approach makes communication faster and easier between the stakeholders and the participants of the projects (Sithambaram et al. 2021). Continuous improvement is allowed by facilitating continuous attention for technical excellence and proper design, enhancing agility. The project is built using motivated individuals, reducing the need to micromanage each aspect and complete the project with better quality. Face-to-face conversations are used to communicate for gather information from participants and team members. The primary measurement of the project’s progress is the reviewed working part of the reviewed project. The agile approach is motivated for the promotion of sustainable development. The tasks are completed constantly at a fixed pace to maintain the management. The project’s simplicity should be maintained by maximising the number of activities not required or done as necessary. The teams should self-organise among each other to be motivated for generating the most value forming the best architectures, designs and requirements emerging from the self-organised teams (Heidling and Kratzer 2022). Reflecting regularly and directly on the way of doing activities for boosting the effectiveness of the business operations in the project management.  

Agile

Six Sigma has been used to measure quality. The Six Sigma approach focuses on the quality of project management and improves the way of operations for the business and productivity. Lean Six Sigma provides a steady competitive edge and reduction of cost. These standard methods facilitate problem-solving and decision making for the completion of the project leading to significantly excellent results. The process helps provide accurate assessments of the company’s operations, minimising waste of resources (Arcidiacono and Pieroni 2018). Decision-making is informed, a data-driven method for reducing unwanted factors that can lead to deviation from the project. Collaboration between the different teams involved is necessary to complete the training program planned and identify growth opportunities. The processes that lead to the business objectives are optimised for reducing total wastage. The resources are utilised to maximum capacity for the current processes. With its dedication towards improved quality, the method provides compliance with international policies and regulations. The project’s lifecycle can be improved by reducing the risks, leading the project to run beyond deadlines (Li, Laux and Antony 2019). The methods can be used to facilitate high-level strategic planning to eliminate risks and problems that might reduce the quality of the project. The consistency is maintained throughout the execution of the project. Continuous improvement and change management are allowed to define the project’s clear scope. The applications of Six Sigma can lead to improved scheduling, better cost management and ameliorated quality standards.

The critical path approach is used in project management as a technique used to identify all the tasks that are vital to the project completion and determine their flexibility with scheduling the tasks. The critical path is the longest path with the sequence of activities that must be completed to complete the project. The activities on the critical paths are termed critical activities as delays in those that can lead the whole project execution and completion to be delayed. The critical path approach focuses on identifying the key activities within the schedule, detecting the dependencies between the activities, prioritising the activities, and calculating the task duration. Inefficient scheduling in the project had led to failure in the past; thus, critical path methodology has led to proper planning processes and task prioritisation (Kusumadarma et al. 2020). The complex training program is broken down into simple individual activities and better project flexibility. The critical path facilitates valuable insights on planning projects, allocation of resources and scheduling tasks. The applicability of the critical path approach lies in improving future planning for the organisation for project completion meetings by comparing business expectations. The resources are managed and allocated effectively, prioritising tasks and providing better decisions for deploying resources. Bottlenecks should be mitigated as they can result in loss of valuable time. Activities are needed to be understood according to their dependencies and priorities to gather better ideology about the tasks which can and cannot run in parallels allowing proper scheduling.

Lean Six Sigma

Project closure strategy consists of processes that should be performed to complete all the project activities. The strategy defined must assure the project managers that all the tasks were completed before closure, recognising the formal end of the project (Russell, Pferdehirt and Nelson 2018). The strategic goals of the project must be satisfied before completion. The client and sponsors must send documented approval for acceptance, ensuring the completion of the whole project scope. The practices and the lessons learned of the project management approach is reviewed and documented for future purposes. The team is completely dismantled, and the official resources are returned to their locations. The closing strategy helps in reviewing the whole application of the project. This post-mortem is an important step of the closure strategy. The project’s performance is measured to determine the project performance in terms of quality, schedule, and quality (Sakuwaha 2020). A meeting or a survey can be conducted to get feedback and understand the perception of participants using the project. The project completion leads to transitions to operations seamlessly after validation of its benefits identified.

The training program planned by Fujitsu is based on the three pillars of structured learning, experiential rotation and learning with others. The best approach for the organisation to improve program management is to represent organisations’ value for cost and meet deadlines ready within next year’s intakes. The project can most benefit from the agile methodology’s flexibility, continuous improvement, and collaborative nature. Agile methods in project management help break down short cycles of development called the “sprints”, which focus on reaching deadlines, flexibly shifting critical priorities to improve participant and stakeholder improvement. The focus is on improving the programme’s quality, integrating testing throughout the development. The methods of the agile approach facilitate the reduction of risk factors, increasing better visibility. The agile team members are focused on controlling the project to estimate perfect costs, resource allocation and scheduling for every sprint (Rosenberger and Tick 2018). Agile project management ensures that the programs can adapt to the necessary changes faced during project implementation. Collaboration and communication with the internal and external stakeholders gathering feedback lead to improved services. Thus, the Agile Approach towards the new programme is the best measure to be recommended.

Conclusion: 

Fujitsu is a multi-national company focused on developing a new training program that offers flexibility. For the management of the project, three project management approaches are analysed that can be applied to this training program. The approaches selected are agile, lean six Sigma and critical path method. The methods. The applications and benefits of the approaches are described individually according to the best practices of project management. A project closure strategy is described designed for the completion of the project. Finally, recommendations are provided, selecting the agile approach as the most suitable approach to be applied in the new programme of Fujitsu to ensure the project meets its objectives.  

Critical Path

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