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Kamaldeep
17 May, 2024
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Businesses today are more dynamic than they were ten years ago. Because of their complexities, organisations frequently need help finishing projects. Management is the most crucial aspect of every business. The project management team must balance budget, manpower, timelines, and other factors. Project management is a skill that is valued by every business around the world. Whatever industry a company operates in, experts are necessary to guarantee that its projects provide the desired outcomes.
Do you want to work as a project manager? Are you curious about how MBA case studies might improve your abilities? Explore this detailed blog on MBA project management case studies to learn how practical experiences can enhance your expertise.
Project management case studies are frequently included in MBA programmes to give students a realistic understanding of issues and solutions that arise in the real world. These case studies allow students to examine, plan, and apply successful project management strategies to situations faced by companies in a range of industries.
Here are the top 5 interesting case studies highlighting key takeaways from MBA Project Management. You can always use case studies in project management curricula to understand the business scenarios better.
Related: MBA Project Topics for Top 10 MBA Specialisations
Introduction: Fujitsu UK’s conventional method for developing project managers involved hiring a small group of recent graduates and apprentices and then placing them through a two-year general business management training programme. Fujitsu UK created a framework to cover the first five years of a participant’s career. It is based on three pillars: experience rotations, learning from others, and structured learning. The framework has been designed with the 70-20-10 learning and development paradigm in mind, which acknowledges that most learning occurs in the workplace.
Result: A government initiative to promote apprenticeships through organised learning programmes that result in certifications recognised by the industry is funding this professional development opportunity. The first part of the process is a three-week structured learning and induction (onboarding) programme that covers fundamentals, including an outline of the company and how it operates, project management fundamentals, and general business ideas like profit and loss and stakeholder management.
For the first six to eight months after the course ends, participants are assigned to a rotating position in the project management office (PMO). Following their initial rotation in the PMO, participants take on a new job, ideally in the industry in which they have gained experience. They oversee a modest project for the next six months; after that, they are reassigned to another project in a different industry, with a potential one-year rotation.
Introduction: One of Vodafone’s important clients asked at the end of 2017 for the company to replace its outdated network with a highly competent, fully managed Global Local Area Network (GLAN) at 42 separate locations throughout the globe. The goal of the Vodafone customer programme delivery project team was to finish it by November 2019. The service agreement called for five years of work. At the start of the project, experts conducted risk assessment workshops and determined that it was going to be very complicated.
Result: Employing a project management methodology predicated on PMI standards: Supplier workshops were held to determine the resources required, as specified in the resource management plan.
Some of the project money was set aside for a tour of the customer’s top locations of importance.
Ninety percent of the client sites that were migrated in the first batch to the new GLAN were successful, and all the sites migrated in the second batch.
The Vodafone GLAN project was effectively completed ahead of schedule and on schedule by the team.
Vodafone received a 10/10 Net Promoter Score (NPS) from the client using the project management waterfall technique. Hence, Vodafone completed the job on schedule.
Introduction: As a ten-year participant in PMI’s Global Executive Council (GEC), Airbus is a multinational aerospace and defence company that was eager to investigate methods for identifying and nurturing its future generation of project leaders. This case study highlights the company’s utilisation of the NextPert Programme from GEC to support internal talent. As part of the curriculum, aspiring leaders serve as the GEC’s think tank, creating original answers to problems the Council has identified.
Result: In 2018, Airbus decided to launch a test programme. The internal trial was so successful that senior Airbus executives decided to carry on with the initiative. In November 2019, Airbus held a second NextPert class. The in-house programme is led by 2018 Airbus NextPert Fabian Osorio, who described it as a win-win situation where the organisation and participants benefit from it.
Introduction: In Guatemala City, patients have received the best possible comprehensive care from Hospital El Pilar for almost 50 years. Due to its dedication to providing high-quality care and ongoing improvement, the private hospital, which provides a variety of medical services including paediatrics, critical care, cancer, cardiology, and outpatient care, has emerged as one of the nation’s top medical facilities.
In order to better serve patients and employees, Hospital El Pilar is committed to fostering innovation through investments in cutting-edge technology. The development team was eventually required to update project management practices without starting from scratch to improve project outcomes. The team had to keep working on the project while trying to streamline its procedures.
Result: To better enable the team to concentrate on their primary goal, this journey started with the separation of the application development team and the support component. The application development team has finished several challenging and well-known development projects for the hospital since DA was used to help manage projects. These projects include the creation of an automated nutrition request system for infants, an electronic billing system for doctors, a system for tracking patient care times, and the development of the application programming interface (API) for the mobile app.
Introduction: In the early months of 2020, COVID-19 began to spread over the globe, and AstraZeneca realised that an efficient COVID-19 vaccine was necessary to stop the virus. AstraZeneca partnered with the University of Oxford in April 2020 to save lives and make a significant impact. Through this historic alliance, AstraZeneca’s capacity to provide a large-scale, worldwide solution was combined with the vaccinology expertise of the highest calibre. Oxford University, AstraZeneca’s research partner, has shown an immunological response in preclinical trials and some promising early clinical outcomes, which gave reason to be optimistic about the speedy development of a vaccine.
Result: The main difficulty facing project managers was adaptability. Every stage of the project encountered shifting conditions as governments from all over the world waited in line to become clients. To guarantee that it would have the required production capacity, the project had to sign agreements with contract manufacturing organisations (CMOs) across multiple regions as it added more government customers. Since other vaccination programmes would also be looking for manufacturing capacity, there was no time to waste. The speed was remarkable under the immense pressure.
Now that you have read the case studies, the question is how to analyse the case studies to make better use of them. Let’s analyse MBA project management case studies for better results.
Begin by identifying the key issues. You will see a central problem or challenge in every case study. For example, in Vodafone’s case, the key issue was risk assessment. Therefore, the team conducted the risk assessments to eliminate the problem.
Collect the information surrounding the case study. The information should include financial reports, stakeholder perspectives, and project timelines. For example, in the AstraZeneca case study, the outcomes of the vaccine survey were determined.
You can read the case studies and brainstorm several alternative solutions; for example, various medical practitioners’ viewpoints were considered in the hospital, El Pilar case study.
Create an action plan outlining the activities needed to implement the selected solution. For instance, a plan was formulated to train the project managers in the Fujitsu case study.
Case studies will help you to apply project management ideas by bridging the gap between theory and practice. You can also gain the critical thinking and decision-making abilities necessary for efficient project management by analysing case studies. If you are pursuing an MBA then, case studies will assist you to improve your problem-solving skills by presenting intricate challenges that call for creative solutions. By identifying and reducing project management risks, you could better handle uncertainties in the industry by analysing case studies.
Case studies on MBA project management, such as those by AstraZeneca, Airbus, and Vodafone, provide insightful information about the challenges of managing projects across various sectors. Being an MBA student, you can gain valuable skills, including critical thinking, decision-making, and problem-solving by evaluating real-life events. This will equip you to succeed as a project manager in the dynamic business environment.
