Spiraling in Case Study

Spiraling In Case Study

Just like the three men on the flight deck of Flight 401 who had failed to monitor their altitude, the PM of the medical monitor project had failed to monitor the total cost of goods sold, cost of the components and the cost of necessary labor. In comparison, the most fundamental parameter within flight is monitoring the altitude and within project management is monitoring the scope. Along with overlooking the costs, the PM also ran into a number of project risks and communication failures.

The company that had taken on this project had a great deal of experience for developing medical monitors and had the information to follow the highly regulated requirements in its development. The project was on track with a vision, a project manager, a cross-functional team and development plan. However, as the project developed a number of interruptions began to surface.

The PM and his team failed to investigate a third party software development team that could function correctly for the project. Since the company could not assign this to their own internal software development team it was appointed to a third-party software development house that had been recommended. This recommendation was never fully reviewed and there was no analysis of this third party's own work. I believe a communication barrier had formed between the software development teams because the external team had a weak development process that the internal team did not want to take the fault for. If there had been more careful planning by the PM the company would not have had to look out the organization. However, if the company did need to look outside the organization the PM should have carefully chosen a software developer that could have accomplished what they needed.

The PM and his team failed to plan better requirements for the waveform display technology. All the requirements that went into the display of the medical monitor narrowed the choices down to a limited one or