April 2009

My coursework on Management Resources and Operations, was to do a case study on a Major Project and reflect upon it from a Project Management perspective. The questions were released in early April (actually 1st of April) and I had the entire Easter holidays to do it. But as usual, I lazed around, and then some more. Quite predictably like my classmates, I was skimming through different websites and journals looking for case-studies and research papers on “Major Projects”. And being an Indian, the typical ones that caught (read blinded )my attention were Delhi/Mumbai/Bangalore/Chennai Metro rail Project and Bandra-Worli Sealink project. I started reading journals and every piece of information that I could lay my hands on (only after having recovered from the hangover of the Easter holidays i.e.), but quite unsurprisingly, I could not get through the first question itself, which was to write about the project’s scope definition, its importance in terms of the business context, and its Work Breakdown Structure. There were 5 other questions, all with equal weight, and a maximum word limit of 3000. For me the problem was, I could not get through the 100 word mark.

And when I was just one week before the deadline, on the 15th of April, while watching numerous YouTube videos on the Bandra-Worli Sealink project, and still scratching my head over the possible stakeholders of that project, my enqueued playlist on Winamp started playing Ghanan Ghanan. (Oi, don’t accuse me to be so dramatic about it; I am just stating the facts) And then, right in front of my eyes, I could see my life flashback. I had seen Lagaan on 15th Jun 2001, Friday Matinee, in a theatre called Devdoot in Silchar. I saw the packed theatre get converted into a cricket stadium. By now, I had seen Lagaan so much that I knew the script backwards. I had seen Satyajit Bhatkal’s making documentary “Chale Chalo” and loved it for bringing out the “lunacy of film-making”. And I could see through all my questions getting answered, pretty much like it was all common-sense. The stakeholders, risk analysis, causal mapping of risks, project management processes, and project network; all came easily and naturally. With the occasional reference to PMBOK and Harvey Maylor’s “Project Management”, I was ready to roll.

***After the Jump, The Case Study Paper*** [Continue Reading…]

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