Chinese University of Hong Kong M Sc Programme

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

Global Technology Services About the Speaker n Speaker: Erwin Lau n Organization: IBM n Date & Time : March 5, 2011 | 10: 00 am - 12: 30 pm n Venue: 8 th Floor, Lecture Hall, William MW Mong Building, Faculty of Engineering, CUHK n Title: Project Management - A Case Study for Apparel & Couture Project Runway n 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. n Biography: Ø 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 ISO 9000 and US AICC awards in system application development & project management and e-Learning product development respectively. Ø 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. Ø 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.

Case Study for the Apparel & Couture Project Runway International Trade Exporter (Seller) 8 9 7 6 1 Design House 2 3 Catwalk or Fashion Show Buyer (Importer) 4 Order Placement, Fulfillment, Etc. Project Management System (simplified workflow for academic teaching purpose) 5 Sourcing Vendor & Development Manufacturer, Factory, Mills, etc. Project Management System March, 2011 Dr. Erwin Lau – Copyright. All Rights Reserved 3

Part 1 Non-IT Project Management for Design House March, 2011 Dr. Erwin Lau – Copyright. All Rights Reserved 4

What have we learned from the movie ……. Some Observations : • New to project • Workload management • Conflict / argument • Leadership March, 2011 • 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. Dr. Erwin Lau – Copyright. All Rights Reserved 5

How can we relate our observations to the project management best practices …… • Project Manager –New to Project –Conflict / argument –Leadership –Mutual trust / co-sense • Project Plan –Workload –Time running out –Time management • Project Change Mgmt –Rework March, 2011 • 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 Dr. Erwin Lau – Copyright. All Rights Reserved 6

Part 2 IT Project Management for Sourcing Vendor & Development March, 2011 Dr. Erwin Lau – Copyright. All Rights Reserved 7

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 T 1. • Other hub Offices subscribe 256 K Frame Relay. • Network infrastructure provides interconnectivity for both Intranet and Internet. • Routing and Switching Equipment composes of different vendor products such as Cisco, 3 Com, 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 March, 2011 Dr. Erwin Lau – Copyright. All Rights Reserved 8

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 March, 2011 Dr. Erwin Lau – Copyright. All Rights Reserved 9

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 March, 2011 Dr. Erwin Lau – Copyright. All Rights Reserved 10

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. March, 2011 Dr. Erwin Lau – Copyright. All Rights Reserved 11

Project Management Office (PMO) BGO HQ (SFO) Project Working Committee Other Divisions (Global) ISO/Project Auditor (HKG) Global SC Transformation Team and PM Merchandizing Divisions (Global) Project Director (HKG) System Development PM (HKG) User Support Team (HKG) Assistant PM Service Request Team (HKG) Helpdesk, Trainer Document writer , QA Team (HKG) SA, PA Network Team (HKG) BA, testers Brand B (Global) Brand G (Global) Brand O (Global) Engineers, Hardware Technician SA, PA, DBA, SP, SE Hub and spoke office PM and merchant team leaders Self-employed Contractor IT Vendor PM Sub/Contractors March, 2011 Dr. Erwin Lau – Copyright. All Rights Reserved 12

Project Deliverables Overview March, 2011 Dr. Erwin Lau – Copyright. All Rights Reserved 13

Before the Project - Initiation Stage • Approach – ISO 9000 Conformance – PMO March, 2011 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 Dr. Erwin Lau – Copyright. All Rights Reserved 14

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 March, 2011 Dr. Erwin Lau – Copyright. All Rights Reserved 15

During the Project - Implementation Stage with control & manage (T-R-O-U-B-L-E-D model) • 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 March, 2011 Dr. Erwin Lau – Copyright. All Rights Reserved 16

During the Project - Implementation Stage with control & manage (cont) • Uncontrolled changes • Low customer satisfaction – CR, SR, workaround – Cultural differences – Parallel changes in legacy & new systems – Usability – Moving targets – Legacy – Business change overrides – Colonial management – The longer the SDLC, the more changes are requested – Individualized demand for system functions • Baseline issues • Inaccurate Estimates –ISO Conformance – Global Hub signoffs – Process standardization – Globalization for hubs – Internal process intricacies – Localization – Many parallel / on-the-fly changes in operations March, 2011 Dr. Erwin Lau – Copyright. All Rights Reserved 17

During the Project - Implementation Stage with control & manage (con’t) • Defective design/solution – Inconsistent with merchandizing pipeline / cycle management in user response time, look & feel, intuitiveness, data & screen flow –Lack of sophisticate Oracle internal support • Overly dependent on DB procedures • DB Schema not optimized • DB cursor overloaded – Lack of programming paradigms • DBA incompetency • No system Development architect • Glue code • Poor performance –Over-simplify complicated Crystal report programming • Workaround – Lack of infrastructure standardization • Browser incompatibility at different hubs • WAS bottlenecks in cursor pool • Patch update not current March, 2011 Dr. Erwin Lau – Copyright. All Rights Reserved 18

Upon the Project Completion - Closure Stage • 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 – Complaints • Re-deploy development staff – CR – System operation – DB operation – Application defect support March, 2011 • Release IT vendor and contractors – Warranty (1 -3 months) – MA – Patch management – System upgrade • Global rollouts – Overnight batch – Real-time online – 7 x 24, 365 – Guaranteed SLA – RCA • Project completion review – Statistics – Entitlement transfer plan – Lesson Learned Dr. Erwin Lau – Copyright. All Rights Reserved 19

After the Project • 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, offsite, online and offline) – User desktop services – Networking services • Skills transfer – User Training – On/offline help documentation March, 2011 Dr. Erwin Lau – Copyright. All Rights Reserved 20

After the Project (cont) • 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 March, 2011 • 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 Dr. Erwin Lau – Copyright. All Rights Reserved 21

Hindi Thai Traditional Chinese Gracias Russian Thank You Terima Kasih Spanish Obrigado English Danke German Malay / Indonesian Arabic Brazilian Portuguese Merci Grazie French Italian Simplified Chinese Korean Tamil Japanese March, 2011 Dr. Erwin Lau – Copyright. All Rights Reserved 22