Thursday, August 02, 2007

Kalamazoo Dog House Story (Part 1)

This is a research question so the more responses, the better. Please vote in a comment.
Your company manufactures and sells dog houses. Your assembly line in Kansas City builds just seven unique (patent pending) dog house sub-assemblies that can be quickly assembled in a great variety of custom configurations. When you receive an order from a client, a unique set of standard sub-assemblies are shipped to a pre-selected subcontractor in the client's location, who for a firm fixed price (FFP), assembles and installs the dog house according to the order, and then customizes the dog house with a fixed allowance for materials and supplies. As the primary vendor (prime contractor), your business operations include a web-based ordering system, manufacturing, shipping, tracking completion and client satisfaction, multi-year subcontract management, and post-installation subcontractor evaluations. Your FFP subcontractors (one per city) do all of the assembly, installation and customization work. In just three years of business operations, you have over 2400 happy clients in 80 cities (80 subcontractors).
A new client in Kalamazoo, Michigan orders a dog house with electric heat and the web-enabled DogCam options. Your subcontractor's customization allowance includes $1225 for a white brick facade and wood shingles to match the client's house, plus $350 in landscape treatments. The only risk is that a city inspection is required for this order (due to electricity).
Your question: Is your Kalamazoo order a project? For purposes of this (informal) research question, please decide on your own without reading the comments, and please apply the PMI standard definition: A project is "a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result."

Please provide your vote (and feel free to elaborate). You may answer anonymously.

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posted by Garry B @ 1:43 PM, Read More...  
18 comments links to this post

18 Comments:

At 3:09 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

if there's risk involved...i guess its a project...so yes

 
At 4:18 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yes It clearly is a project that fits the definition ( it is now a matter of scope that is WHO is it a project for....):

A project is "a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result."


The "subcontractor's customization allowance includes $1225 for a white brick facade and wood shingles to match the client's house, plus $350 in landscape treatments." is clealry a a unique product.....for the subcontractor.

However; it is NOT a project for MY company; because I have an onoging relationship with the sub-contractor in Kalamazoo, Michigan; so for my part this is just a standard order with "electric heat and the web-enabled DogCam options" that is assuming both of those are options.

 
At 4:44 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yes it is a project. There is a desired result, and a set of actions to get there.

 
At 5:04 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yes, it's a project.

 
At 5:24 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is very repetitive manufacturing and retail sales. Lots of retail sales have customization these days, right? Where's the project schedule? Introducing a new line of cat products would be aproject.

 
At 7:06 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yes, it is a project.
Having requirements and constaints lends itself to be a project

 
At 10:58 PM, Anonymous Hal said...

Yes, but it depends on who we are talking about.

For the manufacturer, it's hard to say that it is a project. It's a customizable product. It's not clear that there is anything special that will be done by that organization. They could operate just as their specialists operate fabricating and fulfilling the order.

However, for the local FFP subcontractor, your could argue that it is a project. That it is one-of-a-kind doesn't make it a project. Nor does the discrete nature. It's possible to order a truck that is one-of-a-kind with 30 options to choose from making a distinct configuration. But making that truck is not a project.

So, what makes it a project for the FFP subcontractor? The key is the people that would need to be brought together to fulfill the promise to the client. Those people are a temporary organization ... you might say one-of-a-kind for that custom dog house. One of the most fundamental characteristics of projects is they take a configuration of people that come together sometimes uniquely in a temporary fashion. The temporariness could be the way a group coordinates their action. It may be how leadership is exercised. It may be the make-up of the team. Any one of those items make it different from a usual case. And then when they finish, they disband. It's the nature of the organization that makes it a project.

 
At 11:08 PM, Anonymous max Wideman said...

If you start with a poor definition, you will get a lot of poor answers. There are 23 alternate definitions in my Glossary v. 3.1 on my web site - even more in my v. 4.2. And although risk is typically involved, risk is a red herring. "Temporary" is also a poor word. "Transient" would be better. The issue is, can you identify a discrete outcome at the end of a period such that you know when you are done. When it comes to "job shop" work such as that described, it's a project if you want to manage it as such and an operational process if you don't.
Max Wideman

 
At 11:23 PM, Anonymous Max Wideman said...

PS - I should have added that the question of uniqueness is also a red herring. A strictly repetitive sequence is an on-going process or operation, but there is no reason why the same project (more or less) cannot be repeated at random intervals, such as building the same style house over and over. Or, for that matter, take brushing your teeth . . .

 
At 12:34 AM, Blogger Randy, PMP said...

I think this is a project because there are some elements of risk and unique requirements such as the webcam installation which was not present in the earlier construction of the dog house.

 
At 2:35 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Its a project - with the sub category of a "business as usual project". Its a one off project with a defined deliverable, it is however the reason the company exists...to build dog houses.

If it was a project to investigate expanasion into cat baskets then this wouldnt be a business as usual project but arguably more of an "innovation and reasearch project" where the deliverable is more of an unknown and the result is less black or white in terms of delivery.

My 2 cents..

Ben

 
At 7:57 AM, Blogger Andrew said...

Yes, it is a project.

The difference between an operation and project is a matter of perspective. To the person at the top of the organization, it's a repetitive operation. To the person doing the install, it's a unique project.

 
At 8:55 AM, Anonymous Dotti said...

I'm not 100% certain, from the description, whether electric heat and DogCam are both standard options that customers can choose from. Sounds like DogCam is but electric heat might not be. If we assume that electric heat is not a standard option, and the subcontractor is going to take on the job of scoping, purchasing, installing, configuring and getting the city inspection ... then this is a project, albeit a relatively small one. It is a temporary endeavor, it will create a unique result.

 
At 4:13 PM, Blogger Bill said...

Constructing the doghouses are projects for three reasons:

1) The construction of the specific Dog Houses are temporary endeavors in that they have a definite end date.
2) Each doghouse is unique to that customer because it is configured for specific purposes unique to that particular customer.
3) Even though the tasks in the process are standardized, the scheduling and execution of the tasks will vary based on the unique circumstances of that particular project.

This is similar to a question that web developers have often faced. Even though every website uses a standard set of tags and the processes can be standardized for the construction of the website, each specific website can be considered a project because there is a definite deadline and the result will be unique to that customer.

 
At 1:21 PM, Anonymous Jack Vinson said...

It's not a project for My company. The company just ships pre-assembled parts to the FFP, along with any requirements.

The FFP, however, does see a project.

 
At 6:03 PM, Anonymous Tony Lupton said...

Yes, I believe this is a project. My first thought on reading the shortened description on email was this was simply a manufacturing process, but the longer description indicates a higher level of risk.

 
At 8:24 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

yes it is. It's a one off event with a start, middle and end.

 
At 5:22 AM, Anonymous Immanuel said...

Creating the prototype is a project. However the actual production is not a project. In product production minor customizations are allowed.

My answer is that the mainstream production is not a project.

 

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