Principles of project management - Business case: Yves Rocher

Résumé du document

A new Intranet within the company had been implemented few months previously, with many application programs linked to it, such as the possibility for the store managers to order the clothes of their team or to order a host event to boost their turnover. This Intranet has been a real success among the stores managers (whose mind is really important for the brand), but also among people of various services of the two headquarters located in Rennes and Paris.

This is the reason why the "New Project Department", after having evaluated the needs of the Quality Manager and those of the Sector Managers, decided to develop a new application program on the Intranet. This would permit to the Sector Managers, when they connect on their session of the Intranet, to make directly on line their report of visits; and it would also permit to the Quality Manager, when she connects on her session of the Intranet, to export the reports on Excel according to criteria of her choice, which would save her many manual work.

Extraits

[...] For effective control, the Project Manager needs a single information system to collect data and report progress on cost, schedule, and specifications. According to Clifford Gray and Erik Larson11, “control is the process of comparing actual performance against plan to identify deviations, evaluate possible alternative courses of actions, and take appropriate corrective action”. So, in the frame of this project, the control steps for measuring and evaluating project performance can be different. The first one would be to set a baseline plan, which would provide elements for measuring performance. [...]

[...] So the objectives of the project are numerous. To modernize the working method of the teams To provide to the Sector Managers and to the Quality Manager a tool more adapted to their needs To permit to the Quality Manager to get the information quickly and to get an homogeneous information To speed up the process of transmission of information from the field to the headquarter and to increase teams' reactivity. Here, objectives are clarified and agreement on them has been reached before the real work of the project start, which is an important rule in Project Management to ensure its success2. [...]

[...] The user and/or beneficiaries of the project's output : The Sector Managers and the Quality Managers. Execution of the project 10 Once the project is up and running, it must be managed. If it's not, it will very likely fail. Here, the project execution required all the traditional skills of sound management. So the Project Manager who replaced my boss had to keep people motivated and focused on goals. As I worked actively with him, I had to mediate between the people above and the people below. [...]

[...] So the project team could have undertaken a Project Review14 including all these lessons and these feedbacks. As far as I am concerned, I do think that several steps went well throughout this project. The project team was really excited and motivated by this new application program, and it was also really confident in succeeding to meet the Quality Manager's expectations as they had been clearly defined since the beginning. This atmosphere and these feeling contributed a lot to the project's success. [...]

[...] When they were trained to the tool at the end of the project, some tried to resist to this change of their working habits. The project team and I succeeded to coach them in this transition and to make them aware of the benefits of the project, but it was not an easy task Lock D., (1992), Project Management, England, Gower, Fifth Edition, pp.507-515 Harvard Business School Press, (2004), Managing Projects Large and Small, Harvard Business Essentials, p.10 So as a lesson, I would keep in mind that it is really important in project management to communicate a lot and to involve all the stakeholders even those at a lesser level. [...]