Case study n98: Resources management plan. You have recently hired as a PM by an automotive company whose main business is to design, develop and sell wheels to cars. The main customers are the main car manufacturers in Europe such as FIAT, Nissan, Volkswagen, Toyota among others. You are in charge of a project called: "Design, development and industrialization of the wheel model 4582 car model f55\". The project is developed in the plant that the company has on Spain, but you also have to report to the PMO that is located in the company's headquarters in France. The project lasts 3 years and it is already started. You are a senior PM in the construction industry, and this will be your first experience on automotive projects. There are many issues related to team organization that you don't know how to manage, because it is the first time working on the automotive sector. The automotive sector is highly bureaucratic, there are several intermediate positions and the decisionmaking process is very confusing. It is your first time working on matrixoriented organization and you are learning by doing how to solve issues. The main issues are: 0 The R&D manager is very experienced, he has a lot influence on the company's decision at the local site. 0 The financial manager doesn't speak the language of the country, not even English, and the communication with him is quite difficult. However, he has a lot of influence with the board of directors in the headquarters. 0 You have to report to the Project director of the Spanish brunch (Sponsor) and also to the PMO director at the headquarters. o The operation manager (Industrial manager) manages all the industrial resources (workforce, machines, production lines, etc) and she is the second most powerful stakeholder in the Spanish branch. 0 The commercial manager is very effective on getting new contracts and projects with the customers, but in all the cases the cost and time objectives she agrees with them are almost impossible to achieve. Therefore, there is a lot of pressure on the PMs to achieve almost unrealistic project objectives. 0 The project team is made of 10 people. 5 of them are working 100% into the project (fulltime dedication) and 5 of them are partially involved in the project. All of them report to you as well as to each of the functional managers. Decision making process is quite complicated. o 3 of them belong the R&D department (2 full time and 1 parttime). o 2 of them belong the commercial department (1 full time and 1 part-time). o 4 of them belong to the industrial department (2 full time and 2 part-time). 0 One ofthem belong to the purchasing department and he is parttime involved in the project. 0 One PM assistant (trainee) is full time for the project. After one year working as a PM in a very stressful position, you have realized that many ofthe decisions you have made were right but others were wrong. Please, according to the following statements, choose if these were good (true) or bad (false) decisions, based on the knowledge acquired during the class. "I love working with the R&D manager, he taught me many technical things. I followed all his advices and the milestones he proposed, because I trust him\". "I've seen many times that fulltime designers (reporting also to the R&D manager) were working on other projects and I did nothing because they know what to do". "Once I understood the most important technical aspects, I've started to explain the team members how to do each task\". "I've accepted three changes proposed by the customer and I've consulted only the industrial and R&D manager to know if these were feasible to implement\". "I've decided to use industrial machines during a weekday for trials, just because in the RBS the machines were allocated to the project. That brought me a lot of problems with the industrial manager\". "I've tried to solve most of the technical problems by myself because I'm capable to do". "I've assign at least one responsible and one accountable for each WP on the RACI matrix\". "I've asked the R&D manager for the tools that would help me to manage the project\". "I've talked to team members about their individual goals and | linkthese to the project goal". "I wait before disciplining a team member, so that people have at least one chance to correct their behaviours by themselves\" "I've let the industrial manager to participate in the team weekly meetings to help us to define our project objectives\". "There were several times when we have opposing strategies within the project, the industrial team and the designers couldn't agree about milestones. What I did was to involve their managers in the decisionmaking process." "I've engaged as much as I could with the industrial manager, because he was the one who would authorize to use the machines whenever the project needs them\