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

1. Chinese University of Hong Kong M.Sc. ProgrammeProject Management A Case Study for the Apparel & Couture Project Runway By Erwin Lau, PhD March, 2011

2. 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. About the Speaker

3. Case Study for the Apparel & Couture Project Runway(simplified workflow for academic teaching purpose) International Trade Exporter (Seller) 8 Project Management System Project Management System 9 7 6 1 2 3 4 5 Design House Sourcing Vendor & Development Manufacturer, Factory, Mills, etc. Catwalk or Fashion Show Buyer (Importer) Order Placement, Fulfillment, Etc. Project Management System

4. Part 1 Non-IT Project Management for Design House

5. 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. What have we learned from the movie …….

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

7. Part 2 IT Project Management for Sourcing Vendor & Development

8. 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

9. 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

10. Project Background (Cont) • 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

11. Project Background (Cont) • 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.

12. Project Management Office (PMO)

13. Project Deliverables Overview

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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(T-R-O-U-B-L-E-D model)

17. 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 (cont)

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

19. 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 Upon the Project Completion - Closure Stage

20. 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

21. 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 After the Project (cont)

22. Hindi Thai Traditional Chinese Gracias Russian Spanish Thank You Obrigado English Brazilian Portuguese Terima Kasih Danke German Malay / Indonesian Merci Grazie French Italian Simplified Chinese Korean Tamil Japanese Arabic