Social Security Number Expansion Case Study

I believe that the two words that best describes Project Management are teamwork and communication. As I read the case study the one constant theme that from this Social Security Number Expansion project was the lack of teamwork and communication that was showed by the various departments involved. For this case it would be easy to put the blame on the Project Manager for not managing the various Functional Business Analysts the way he or she should have but I do not think that was the case. The boss who appointed the Project Manager should have communicated with these Functional Business Analysts that there is a designated Project Manager and that they need to listen and report to him or her. If that happened, then the issue of the Functional …show more content…
When it became obvious to the Project Manager that this SSN change affects more than just the HR area. The Files and data that were being changed were interfaced throughout the company’s systems. This should have been something that was thought about when the project first came to life, not three months into the project. This I blame the Project Manager and he should have taken this into account when planning the risks for the project. It would have prevented the Project Manager from trying to bring representatives from across the company together so that a common solution so late into the projects life. By putting this in the risk portion of the project it would have made the Project Manager notify these other representatives aware that this could have been an issue and the other representatives could have carved out time in their schedules a head of time if this risk came to life. By highlighting this risk at the start of the project, a representative from each department that could have been impacted should be invited to the bi-weekly status meetings. This would have allowed these other departments to see what exactly is going on with the project and how it would affect them. This issue is also something that the Systems Analyst should have worked on with the Project Manager. The Systems Analyst should have been seen this coming and notified the Project Manager that other departments within the company could …show more content…
I believe the flaw in this project was the boss did not communicate who the Project Manager was. If the boss did do that then the Project Manager would have been able to have the power and authority to get everything done in the way that he or she wanted to. The other departments did not see the urgency in this project because they thought that a random Systems Analyst was nagging them to do new work. If all of the solutions that I stated above were put into action this would have been a very successful project and would have been done way ahead of schedule. It all comes down to the fact that the key tools for a successful project are teamwork and communication. That is what failed is specific