Chinese University of Hong Kong M.Sc. Programme Project Management

Chinese University of Hong Kong M.Sc. ProgrammeProject Management

A Case Study for the Apparel & Couture Project Runway

ByErwin Lau, PhD

March, 2011

Global Technology Services

About the Speaker

Speaker: Erwin Lau

Organization: IBM

Date & Time : March 5, 2011 | 10:00 am - 12:30 pm

Venue: 8th Floor, Lecture Hall, William MW Mong Building, Faculty of Engineering, CUHK

Title: Project Management - A Case Study for Apparel & Couture Project Runway

Abstract:This seminar begins with a video from which the speaker and students will interactively observe the usages, problems, changes and issues at the design stage of a couture project where project management best practices can apply. Next, the speaker will briefly explain the project management system where IT department is involved to support the related project life-cycle.

Biography:

Erwin Lau has 24 years of senior leadership and technical expertise recognized by a number of major banking, financial, insurance and supply chain MNCs in Canada, Hong Kong and US. He has received HK ISO9000 and US AICC awards in system application development & project management and e-Learning product development respectively.

In academic, Erwin has been the lecturer in Peking University and HKU, instructor in Agricultural Bank of China, speaker in CUHK, HKU, HKIB and e-Learning Web Symposium, and author in SCMIS and Allerton Conferences. Lately, he has been appointed the IT committee member, university ambassador and honorary assistant professor for different education institutes.

In research, Erwin has been actively focused on a number of areas - business analytics and optimization, high usability, quality services, and supply chain finance for banking sector.

March, 2011 Dr. Erwin Lau – Copyright. All Rights Reserved 3

Case Study for the Apparel & Couture Project Runway(simplified workflow for academic teaching purpose)

Buyer(Importer)

DesignHouse

OrderPlacement,Fulfillment,Etc.

SourcingVendor &Development

Manufacturer,Factory,Mills, etc.

Exporter (Seller)International Trade

1 2 3 4 5

6

7

8

9

Catwalk orFashionShow

Proj

ect M

anag

emen

t Sys

tem

Project Managem

ent System

Project Management System


Part 1

Non-IT Project Management for

Design House


What have we learned from the movie …….

Some Observations :-

•New to project•Workload management•Conflict / argument•Leadership

•Mutual trust / co-sense

•Stay focus

•Auditing, inspection, Suggestion for Improvement

•Status / milestones

•Time line

•Time running out

•Staff problem management

•Time management

•Rework

–Team work quality

–Workload balance & role and responsibilities

•Recognition, appraise, etc.


How can we relate our observations to the project management best practices ……

•Project Manager

–New to Project

–Conflict / argument

–Leadership–Mutual trust / co-sense

•Project Plan–Workload

–Time running out–Time management

•Project Change Mgmt–Rework

•Project Status / tracking mgmt–Status / milestones

•Project QA Mgmt–Auditor, checking, Suggestion

for improvement–Rework–Team work quality

•Project Problem Mgmt–Conflict / argument–Staff problem


Part 2

IT Project Management for

Sourcing Vendor & Development


Project Background

• BGO Company Situation– US$ 40 Billions in revenue generation– Carry 3 different brands of apparel, accessories, personal care product and couture for different age groups– 6 hub offices located in Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Miami, Turkey and Korea and 20 Spoke offices in North Asia,

Africa and Europe – 1 store in Central–4,249 stores in 3,114 store locations in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Japan and Germany– Usability comments regarding weakness in confirmed placement summary and time & action processes– Had high pressure from merchandisers and desired to manage sourcing and vendor development under a Web-

based production tracking system.–Network Infrastructure

•Hong Kong Office subscribes a T1.•Other hub Offices subscribe 256K Frame Relay.•Network infrastructure provides interconnectivity for both Intranet and Internet.•Routing and Switching Equipment composes of different vendor products such as Cisco, 3Com, Nortel, etc.•Firewalls are located in different segment for protection•Storage Area Network for the IBM AIX servers

–System Infrastructure•Core systems include project tracking system, merchandiser application software, financial system, storage

devices, database, etc.•There are some office support systems such as file and print systems, email systems, Lotus Notes, home-

grown Web applications, enterprise data warehouse, etc.•Some of the application software run in a client/server environment.

–As a market leader, BGO Project Manager could take advantage of lessons learned in industry and past global projects


Project Background (Cont)

• Needs– Consolidation of 3 functional areas into

the holistic production tracking system– Improvement in usability and

merchandiser/vendor productivity– unification of discrete process and

disparate systems– Streamline workflow across all hub

offices– Automated placement orders from

sourcing to shipping goods, and time & action for the products style development tasks to production workflow tracking

– A time and cost saving system to deliver a stronger sourcing & vendor development business capability



•Business Benefits– Increase productivity and performance

of the merchandizers– Make time for merchants to reduce

over-time working hours and/or take up additional tasks

– Capture and process all production tracking data, information and actions in a single Web-based system to increase the efficiency and flexibility of the following:-

•collaborative planning•forecast•costing •bill of materials•vendor management across all

hub offices



•Solutions– IT vendor to solve entry problems into multiple systems by

implementing an efficient and time saving single Web-based system

– PMO to lead internal teams and selected IT vendor and contractors through adoption of the following:-

•Directive PM

•Controlling PM

•Supportive PM

– Effective and timely communications amongst all hub offices to improve their performance

– Project Management

•Conformance with ISO 9001 standard and HQ policy, process & procedures

•Project visibility and ability to plan

•Reasonable risk undertaking

•Just-in-time problem and issue management

– Project control in functionality, usability, changes, milestones, total quality and budget.


Project Management Office (PMO)

BGO HQ (SFO)

Other Divisions(Global)

ProjectDirector (HKG)

ISO/ProjectAuditor (HKG)

System DevelopmentPM (HKG)

User SupportTeam (HKG)

Service RequestTeam (HKG)

QATeam (HKG)

Assistant PM

SA, PA, DBA, SP, SE

BA, testersSA, PAHelpdesk, Trainer,

Document writer

NetworkTeam (HKG)

Engineers,Hardware Technician

Hub and spoke officePM and merchant

team leaders

Self-employed Contractor

Merchandizing Divisions(Global)

Brand B(Global)

Brand G(Global)

Brand O(Global)

IT Vendor PM

Sub/Contractors

Project Working Committee

Global SC Transformation Team and PM


Project Deliverables Overview

1.0Source Vendor

2.0Fabric

Management

3.0Trims

Management

4.0Prepare For Presentation

5.0Prepare For Placement

6.0Costing Placement

7.0Prepare for Production

8.0Track Production

9.0Produce Goods

10.0Ship Goods

Vendor & Mill Management Costing

WIP TrackingFabric & Trims Management


Before the Project - Initiation Stage

• Approach– ISO 9000 Conformance

– PMO

Scope of Work– Project Scope– Key assumptions– IT PM responsibilities

•Vendor and Sourcing Development industry knowledge •Overall project management• Requirement elicitation• System design• Milestone mgmt,• QA Testing• Deployment and on-going support

– Business User PM responsibilities• Sub-project management• Requirement review• Function design & review• Training and documentation• User acceptance test and signoffs

– Contractors and IT vendor PM responsibilities•Similar project experience in S&VD industry•SDLC•Subproject management•Time tracking & utilization, labour cost management•SI testing


Before the Project - Initiation Stage (cont)

• Materials– Programming, technical doc, training manual, project doc, problem management report, issue log, etc.

• Completion Criteria– QAT, UAT, BAT, skills Transfer to service request team, user support team and network support team

• Project Schedule– Timeline & milestone for master project and sub-projects

• Cost and Charges

– CAPEX & OPEX– Timesheets– Change Request

• Deliverables guidelines– ISO 9000– HQ IT Policy, Process and Procedures


During the Project - Implementation Stage with control & manage(T-R-O-U-B-L-E-D model)

• Timeline missed

– Variance >> 15%

•Resources issues

– High internal attrition rate

– Overly dependent on DBA and IT vendors/contractors

•Out of budget

– Fixed cost of IT vendor/contractor

– OPEX for internals


During the Project - Implementation Stage with control & manage (cont)

•Uncontrolled changes

– CR, SR, workaround

– Parallel changes in legacy & new systems

– Moving targets

– Business change overrides

– The longer the SDLC, the more changes are requested

– Individualized demand for system functions

•Baseline issues

– Process standardization

– Globalization for hubs

– Internal process intricacies

– Localization

– Many parallel / on-the-fly changes in operations

•Low customer satisfaction

– Cultural differences

– Usability

– Legacy

– Colonial management

• Inaccurate Estimates

–ISO Conformance

– Global Hub signoffs


During the Project - Implementation Stage with control & manage (con’t)

•Defective design/solution

– Inconsistent with merchandizing pipeline / cycle management in user response time, look & feel, intuitiveness, data & screen flow

– Lack of programming paradigms

•No system Development architect

•Glue code

•Poor performance

•Workaround

–Lack of sophisticate Oracle internal support

•Overly dependent on DB procedures

•DB Schema not optimized

•DB cursor overloaded

•DBA incompetency

–Over-simplify complicated Crystal report programming

– Lack of infrastructure standardization

•Browser incompatibility at different hubs

•WAS bottlenecks in cursor pool

•Patch update not current


Upon the Project Completion - Closure Stage

• Signoffs– All hubs to sign off UAT– IT to sign acceptance certificate for the

contractors/IT vendors– Some may give provisioning signoffs

• Ad-hoc requests– SR– CR– Complaints

• Re-deploy development staff– CR– System operation– DB operation– Application defect support

• Release IT vendor and contractors– Warranty (1-3 months)– MA– Patch management– System upgrade

• Global rollouts– Overnight batch– Real-time online– 7x24, 365– Guaranteed SLA– RCA

• Project completion review– Statistics– Entitlement transfer plan– Lesson Learned


After the Project

• Suggestion for improvement

•Maintenance and support for procured IT vendor products & services

• Change request management– More than 10 man-days SLA

•Service request management– Programming with 5 to 10 man-days

effort SLA

• Customer call management (on-site, off-site, online and offline)

– User desktop services– Networking services

• Skills transfer– User Training

– On/offline help documentation


After the Project (cont)

•Complaint Management– Clean issue log– Clean user complaint log– Clean Sev-1& Sev-2 PMR log

•Project Entitlement Management– Programming and functional

specifications for maintenance programmers

– Project Management workbook & documentation

– Skills transfer from System Development to System Services and User Support and Network Support Teams

•Defect Support– CR team / MA programmers– SW Vendor program fix / patch /

upgrade management– Defect Prevention Plan

•Assessment•RCA•BCP•Preventive, mitigation and

corrective actions•System Risk and vulnerability

counter-measures


Arabic

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MerciGrazie

Gracias

Obrigado

Danke

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Chinese University of Hong Kong M.Sc. Programme Project Management