• Book Name: Project Management Case Studies by Harold Kerzner
• Author: Harold Kerzner
• Pages: 740
• Size: 6 MB

Project Management Case Studies PDF Free Download

Other than on-the-job training, case studies and situations are perhaps the best way to learn project management. Project managers pride themselves on finding solutions to problems, and case studies are an excellent way for this to happen. Case studies require that students investigate what went right in the case, what went wrong, and what recommendations should be made to prevent these problems from recurring in the future. The use of case studies is applicable both to undergraduate- and graduate-level project management courses as well as training programs to pass various certification examinations in project management. Situations are smaller case studies that focus on one or two points that need to be addressed, whereas case studies can focus on a multitude of interrelated issues.

The table of contents identifies several broad categories for the cases and situations, but keep in mind that the larger case studies, such as “Corwin Corporation,” “The Blue Spider Project,” or “The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Iridium,” could have been listed under several topics. Some of the case studies, such as “The Need for Metrics” and “The Singapore Software Group,” are well suited for group exercises. Other smaller or minicases can be covered during the class period. Several smaller cases or situations are included in this edition at the request of faculty members who asked for cases that could be discussed in class and worked on in a team environment.

Project Management Case Studies PDF Free Download

These smaller cases can be used as in-class assignments or take-home assignments. Almost all of the cases and situations have seed questions either in the case itself or in the instructor’s teaching notes on the case to assist the reader in the analysis of the case. The seed questions from the instructor’s manual will be provided by the instructor. An instructor’s manual is available from John Wiley & Sons only to faculty members who adopt the book for classroom use. Almost all of the case studies are factual. In most circumstances, the cases and situations have been taken from the author’s consulting practice. The names of many of the companies and the people in the companies have been disguised for obvious reasons.

Some educators prefer not to use case studies that are more than 10 or 20 years old. However, the circumstances surrounding many of these older cases and situations are the same today as they were years ago. Unfortunately, we seem to be repeating several of the mistakes made previously. Eighteen new cases have been added to this edition and some existing cases have been updated. Seed questions in the case studies reflect on some of the issues that project managers might face. The new cases are:

● Disney (A): Case study discusses how Disney’s Imagineering project managers may need a different set of skills from those possessed by most traditional project managers.

● Disney (B): Case study discusses some of the challenges Disney faced with the Haunted Mansion Project.

● Disney (C): Case study discusses how the enterprise environmental factors impacted Disney’s decisions to build new theme parks.

● Disney (D): Case study discusses the contractual decisions that Disney faces with some of its partners in the construction of worldwide theme parks.

● Disney (E): Case study discusses the challenges faced by an established theme park in Hong Kong when Disney announced it would build a Disney theme park nearby.

● Olympics (A): Case study shows the complexities and enterprise environmental factors that impact the decision to host the Olympic Games.

● Olympics (B): Case study shows the complexities of following the PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct when managing Olympic projects that involve billions of dollars and often-greedy contractors.

● Olympics (C): Case study shows what is involved with managing a project designed to feed 20,000 Olympic athletes and staff at the Olympic Village when they come from almost every country in the world and may have different nutritional needs.

● Olympics (D): Case study discusses the some of the health and safety risks that the Olympic athletes faced in the Rio Olympic Games

● The Project Audit: Case study discusses a company’s recognition that it needed a process in place to audit projects, but it was unsure about how to do it, when to do it, or who should do it.

● Trade-off Decisions (A): Case study discusses the challenges that a company faces when having to make critical trade-off decisions.

● Trade-off Decisions (B): Case study discusses the options that a company faces with regard to making a critical decision.

● The Executive Director: Case study discusses how a newly appointed executive director at a government agency got immersed in political gamesmanship to protect his image.

● Boeing 787 Dreamliner Battery Problems: Case study illustrates the importance of safety as a project management constraint when designing a commercial aircraft.

● Airbus A380: Case study focuses on some of the business-related decisions that project managers must make in the commercial aircraft industry.

● Agile (A): Case study focuses on some of the strategic business decisions that may be impacted when converting to agile or Scrum, especially when your business survives on competitive bidding and your clients may not understand or allow you to use agile or Scrum.

● Agile (B): Case study describes some of the operational issues facing project managers when they must manage a project in an agile environment rather than in a traditional project management environment.

● Agile (C): Case study illustrates how reporting project status in an agile environment may be different from status reporting in a traditional project management environment. Most of the case studies are factual, but the names of the companies, the names of the individuals involved, and other identifying details have been changed (with the exception of Disney, Boeing, and Iridium, and the case studies of the 2016 Olympics and the Challenger space shuttle disaster).

Project management case studies and answers pdf.