Use the Project Management Case Studies 5th ed by Harold Kerner to answer the following questions.

CORWIN CORPORATION

QUESTIONS 1. What were the major mistakes made by Corwin? 2. Should Corwin have accepted the assignment? 3. Should companies risk bidding on projects based on rough-draft specifications? 4. Should the shortness of the proposal preparation time have required more active top management involvement before the proposal went out of house? 5. Are there any risks in not having the vice president for manufacturing available during the go or no-go bidding decision? 6. Explain the attitude of Dick Potts during the proposal activities. 7. None of the executives expressed concern when Dr. Reddy said, "I would never have assigned him [West] as the project leader." How do you account for the executives' lack of concern? 8. How important is it to inform line managers of proposal activities even if the line managers are not required to provide proposal support? 9. Explain Dr. Reddy's attitude after go-ahead. 10. How should West have handled the situation where Pat Ray's opinion of the test data was contrary to that of Corwin's engineering personnel? 11. How should West have reacted to Ray's informing Delia that the first five tests were failures? 12. Is immediate procurement of all materials a mistake? 13. Should Pat Ray have been given the freedom to visit laboratory personnel at any time? 14. Should an in-house representative have the right to remove a functional employee from the project? 15. Financially, how should the extra tests have been handled? 16. Explain Dr. Reddy's attitude when told to assume control of the project. 17. Delia's letter, stating the five reasons for canceling the project, was refuted by Frimel, but with no success. Could Frimel's early involvement as a project sponsor have prevented this? 18. In retrospect, would it have been better to assign a marketing person as project manager? 19. Your company has a single methodology for project management. A powerful customer offers you a special project that does not fit into your methodology. Should a project be refused simply because it is not a good fit with your methodology? 20. Should a customer be informed that only projects that fit your methodology would be accepted?