Thu:

Hello everyone, we are group Hyon. Today we would like to talk about a particular detail of project management. It’s a case study called “The IT Department at Hamelin Hospital”. In this case we will go through three questions:

-What are the potential problems and advantages of having the same team members on multiple -projects at the same time?

-What are the benefits and drawbacks of starting most new hires at the help desk function?

-And how does selling its IT services to competing hospital create a determinant of the project success?

Let’s summarize the case first.

Hamelin is a hospital in the northeastern United States. It has an IT department which operates on a 35 million budget and overseers thirty to forty projects each year. In other words, this department takes care of project management work for the hospital.

The jobs in this department fall into five categories from low to high: help-desk technician, programmer, senior programmer, system analyst, and project manager. New hires start at the help-desk and gradually climb the ladder until they are lucky enough to become one of the five project managers.

With the IT department’s success, Hamelin Hospital has begun to farm out its IT service to other competing hospital and sustained its own success.

Now let’s get on with the main topic.

Đức:

About the potential problems and advantages of having the same team members on multiple projects at the same time. From the sound of it, it’s a given that bad things are more evident than good things for this particular issue so we are going to identify the problems first.

Basically, having members on multiple projects at the same time puts a great strain on the IT members. They’re humans, too, so they will be exhausted if they work too much.

It’s also a waste of human resources to work on multiple projects at the same time. Normally this ac tells the opposite, but if there are more projects than the IT department can handle, it turns out that the hospital is squeezing all the juice out of their employees rather than using the most of their resources.

Even more of a case is confusion in managing projects. We get confused when we work too much sometimes. And for a hospital this is extremely dangerous. Imagine health care for a patient asthma and surgery for a patient with appendicitis got swapped. How disastrous would it be?

But everything has a good side to it. There are also advantages in having the same members working on different project.

To begin with, it’s cost saving. A hospital can’t afford to hire too many employees for just ten or so projects. It takes time to train new recruits anyway.

It also helps sustaining overall control on many aspects of the hospital at the same time. If you do many jobs for the same company, you’re bound to find a core connection for that purpose sooner or later.

And in sharp contrast with the problems above, using the same team members for different projects give them a chance to improve themselves. It has always been the main point of this act. Of course only if the workload isn’t too high.

Tuyết:

Second question. What are the benefits and drawbacks of starting new hires at the help-desk. This time let’s go from the good things first.

Evidently, the help-desk is a good place to familiarize new hires with what the IT department does. They can understand the importance of the IT department to the hospital better too.

Long-term wise, they can also accumulate experience to work in other areas. They can’t do anything advanced without basics after all.

So what are the drawbacks?

From the first look of it, the help-desk is definitely going to be cluttered. Most new recruits work there, so the number can go quite high.

In the meantime, other areas will lack manpower. It’s true that you can’t make experts appear out from thin air, but you still need a sufficient numbers to work with.

Dũng:

Moving on to the final question. Hamelin hospital has farm out its IT service to other hospital, which is the determinant for its success. We know they can get extra money from this, but it’s the competing hospitals we are talking about. Why bother helping your opponents? Well it’s simple.

If you help others, it means you’re already at a higher position in the market. Keeping that position is important, because it makes you number one. And everybody looks up at number one.

If you have your people working with others, it’s easier to keep track of your competitors. Think of it as having a scout sent out.

Finally, whatever the excuse, you have to help other people. A hospital’s duty has always been helping others. If you can, you should help each other out. And then everyone can reach a higher level of competition together where you’re in the lead.

Thu:

So what’s the lesson we can learn from this case? As you can see, Hamelin Hospital’s success originated from its IT department, who worked on project management for it. So it’s important to remember that project management is important if you want to do something big. Combined with IT, project management is a powerful tool to use to gain the upper hand in any field you can think of.

This is the end of our presentation. Good bye, and I hope we will see you again.