Successful projects

Question 1 

In December 2019, an epidemic of an emerging virus called SARS-Cov-2 began in Wuhan in China. This virus has spread rapidly around the world, and 2 months later, the WHO officially qualified this phenomenon as a global pandemic.  Faced with this health crisis, the UK government has initially implemented non-curative strategies to reduce the transmission of the virus (such as school closures, lockdown, teleworking etc...).

These strategies had a phenomenal negative impact on the country's economy and could not last indefinitely. Furthermore, UK is one of the highest Covid19 death rate European countries1. Consequently, vaccination, generally considered throughout history as being the most effective means to counter infectious diseases, has become the best solution to put an end to the new pandemic.

This case study presents the UK’s covid19 vaccination deployment.
In the first part of this analysis, we will expose this initiative and the strategic intent behind it as well as its environment and its success criteria. Then, in the second part, we will expose a completely different initiative and will compare it to the UK’s covid19 vaccination deployment.

1. The UK’s covid19 vaccination deployment:

1. Defining the initiative, its strategic intent and its environment: 

The initiative described in this case study is the UK vaccination deployment in response to the covid19 pandemic which:

• Is a unique venture
• Has a beginning and an end date (limited schedule) 🡺 time constraint
• Has a limited budget 🡺 cost constraint
• Uses human resources (such as scientists, doctors etc…) and non-human resources (such as hospitals, vaccines etc...)
• Has a scope constraint 🡺 Deploy the vaccine as quickly as possible

These elements indicate that the UK’s vaccination deployment is a project responding to a set of circumstances (covid19 pandemic) and fulfilling the government's strategy.

This means that this project is the tool, which by creating changes, achieves the government’s strategic goal. These changes result in benefits and value whether tangible (which can be touched, such as the virus suppress) or intangible (which cannot be touched, such as people's increased trust in the UK government).  

So what is strategy and how do we distinguish it from strategic intent?

The strategy of a government (or organization in general) is a long-term (or medium-term) aspiration developed in response to encountered challenging set of circumstances.

• In our example, in response to the health crisis, the UK government’s developed strategy is to overcome the virus and return to a normal life.

In the other hand, strategic intent can be defined as the overarching goal of the initiative (or organization), in order to articulate it we must consider 4 themes which are (1) the desired results of the strategy, (2) the resources available, (3) the external context, and (4) the time frame.

• In our example, the strategic intent that states behind this project is to vaccinate 2 million people / week within 3 months. To achieve this, a large vaccination campaign will be deployed in a context of covid19 pandemic.  This vaccination campaign has as a cornerstone 4 parameters which are : the supply of vaccines, the prioritization of a more sensitive part of the population, the organization of vaccination sites and the deployment of human resources.

This strategy operates in two types of environment:

• Internal environment: These are the elements that are part of the organization. In our case study, it’s the government and its decision-makers, as well as all the actors involved in the vaccination campaign.
• External environment: These are all the elements that are not part of the organization. In our case study, these are society, economy, people who receive the vaccine, government critics etc…

1. Success criteria:

For a project to be successful, certain conditions must be met. Indeed, there are elements that define the nature of a project called the triple constraint: Time, Budget and Scope.
Therefore, the success criteria of the UK’s vaccination deployment are:

• The respect the defined schedule: 12 weeks for the 1st vaccine dose.
• The project must stay within the budget guidelines: £11.7bn.
• It must terminate according to its primary specifications: Quick deployment of the vaccine in order to suppress the virus.

However, and in our study case, we can make some criticisms of this rule. Indeed, the project could respect these 3 constraints but not be successful if it doesn’t respect a 4th parameter 🡺 the consumer acceptance (in our case the consumer is the British citizen who receives the vaccine).

This 4th parameter is to be taken very seriously as it is necessary to satisfy the needs of the consumer. That transforms the triple constraint of the project into a quadruple constraint.

1. Comparison with the DMI strategy:

1. DMI?

DMI, short for Digital Media Initiative, is a project launched by the BBC in 2008. Its objective was to modernize production methods by switching to a fully digital production. After 5 years of development and spending £ 100million, the BBC decided to terminate the contract with subcontractor Siemens and abandon the project in 20122. I choose this project because it is also a phenomenal project with great financial stakes but much more different from the UK’s covid19 vaccination deployment.

1. Comparison:

The 2 projects are large-scale deploying huge budgets, enormous resources and sharing very ambitious visions.

But on the one hand we have a project on the way to success, and on the other hand we have a project which despite 100 million pounds spent and 5 years of development has failed to achieve its objectives.

The vaccination project is very well put together, it is very well established, the risks are studied and the answers are given. There are no technical issues, and human and non-human resources are deployed to cope.

DMI on the other hand, took too long to realize that the project was in jeopardy. This proves that the follow-up was not effective.

These 2 examples show two different kinds of project management. They demonstrate how important the role of project manager can be and the importance of his role in achieving pre-established objectives.

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Question 2

One of the biggest challenges is keeping control over a current project and maintaining its projected baseline. In order to ensure the achievement of each project’s objectives, it is essential to keep everything under control.

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