Learning from a
Project “Post-mortem”
The credit card industry is ever changing and
there was a time of growth in the 1990’s for one of the major card issuers that I worked for. I worked on implementation projects that
allowed for the U.S issued card to be used overseas in the ATMs in foreign
banks. Each ATM system had to be converted
to be able to communicate with the Funds Access System that is used for U.S
banking networks. There were many issues
that were worked through and it got to be a relatively smooth implementation project
after having a few under our belts.
There
is one particular project, however, that stands out in my mind because it was
one that had a major set back and was completed but long past the deadline and
with a lot of expense that was over budget.
The
company was going to roll-out a new card product that was a clear credit
card with a microchip in the middle of the card with a small magnetic
strip. If my memory serves me correctly, the chip was
tested so that point of sale (POS) guns could be pointed at it and it would
work to capture the sale information and all the other information . The
problem was that the ATM readers at the banks were not recognizing the clear
card product, so our implantation project was brought to a halt. We had to go back to marketing and all of the
other stakeholders to work out a solution.
There was no way the card was going to work in any type of ATM. The solution was that the first issue of the
card had to be sort of an opaque color, which was the most transparent that it
could be for the machines to recognize that card was inserted.
This
was clearly an issue where all departments had not completely brainstormed the
idea before deciding to go forward with the product idea, development, and
implementation.
The post-mortem questions found in
the Project Management Minimalist that analyze the need and feasibility of the project
deliverables fits best with the issue that we had in this ATM project (Greer, 2010,
p. 41).
The answer to the 3 questions in
Greer’s Phase 1:
1. Did our needs/market analysis or
feasibility study identify all the project deliverables that we eventually had to build? If not,
what did we miss and how can we be sure our future analyses don't miss such items?
The answer to this question would
have to be no. The market study/analysis
did not identify all deliverables. This
detail of the product for the bank ATMs and the feasibility they the card would
work was not discussed in full detail in the beginning. Marketing had a clever idea for a new card
product and it was a project that did not originally include our Global
Electronic Funds Services Department to make sure that the card would work in a
major business segment.
2. Did our needs/market analysis or
feasibility study identify unnecessary deliverables? If so, how can we be sure
our future analyses don't make this mistake?
The clear
card idea was agreed upon before it was truly researched for usage. Without each department working projects in
the same manner using all stakeholders from the beginning analysis phases,
there will be issues. As Greer mentions,
there are 7 things that need to be addressed in the beginning phase of a project.
They are: First, figure out if the
project is needed. That is, find out if it supports a: Market demand, a business
or strategic initiative, a customer request, a technological advance, a legal
requirement, or some other important organizational initiative (2010, p.
8).
3. How could we have improved our
need-feasibility or analysis phase? For
the project mentioned, the need-feasibility or analysis phase could have been
expanded to include every possible scenario for the card. Usage, acceptance, technology advance as
stated above, seem to be some key factors that were missing.
References:
Greer, M. (2010). The project
management minimalist: Just enough PM to rock your projects! (Laureate custom ed.). Baltimore:
Laureate Education, Inc.
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