Teradyne Corporation-The Jaguar Project Case Solution

What impact did the project management tools have on the Jaguar project? How did they change behavior? How did they influence performance? How critical is Jaguar project for Teradyne’s competitive strategy?

As top management was not aware on how to utilize the metrics; therefore, they failed to derive the right value from it. In addition, considerable time was spent on calculating the critical path and discussing the right tool rather than on solving the problem at hand. The new project approach directly affected the performance. Hardware part was completed in record time, but the software part took much more time than expected. The development team was under immense pressure to keep up with timeline, which initially motivated them, but later it became the reason of employee frustration.

What unintended consequences did Teradyne experience in using the project management tools? What lessons should Teradyne take away from the Jaguar project?

A major consequences that the company had to face for using the project management tool was that the top management did not have enough time to understand the metrics. In addition, resources were wasted in training and developing. Moreover, mandatory status updates and project management tools deviated the focus of employees from the real problem towards supporting and evaluation tasks.  

Some key lessons that Teradyne can learns from the Jaguar project is that the value and importance of project management tools should be taught to project managers. Without their support, these tools are useless. Secondly, change in strategy requires change in culture of the organization. Without the change in mindset, nothing worthwhile can be achieved. Moreover, employees and senior management should learn how to balance their focus on resolving core problems and simultaneously work on project management tools. Last, project management tools should not be considered an additional responsibility, rather a process for achieving the result.

What development strategy was chosen to meet this need? Present strengths and weaknesses of the strategy.

To overcome issues caused by Teradyne’s traditional project management strategy, methodologies, principles, and procedures of total quality management (TQM) were used. These tools include seven step problem solving process, root cause analysis, fishbone diagram in communicating and discussing management problems etc. These tools allowed Teradyne to improve its manufacturing quality and customer service considerably as employees had better mechanism to deal with issues and resolve them. One major weakness of this TQM strategy was seen in the engineering department where the same issues of over-commitment, budget crossing, and time delays were present. Though, these issues cannot be attributed directly to total quality management practices as many of the engineers resisted in accepting and following these tools during their work. Many engineers found these tools to be overly-restrictive and also felt that these tools increased complications rather than simplifying. 

The Jaguar project involved both hardware and software. Should the same project management methodology have been used for both? Why or why not?

Same project management methodology could have been used for both software and hardware development. As apparent from the case study, there was nothing wrong with the project management tools, the issue was with the people who were using it. If anyone would follow the best industry tool half-heartedly, he would never achieve success. Jaguar approach provided a success for hardware but failed for software mainly because the focus of employees was towards managing tools rather on the core issue.

Why do you think the software challenge was larger than anticipated for Teradyne?

The main reason behind an immense software challenge was that project managers and engineers failed to derive the right value from the project management tool. They kept playing with the critical path in order to show on paper that the project was on track, but it was not in actual. People in responsible positions focused more on tools rather than the problem, which resulted in failure to meet deadline. In addition, the challenge also got larger because initially people were resisting its implementation as it was forcing them to commit.

What value proposition is Teradyne presenting to its customers? Does it resonate with its customers’ needs?

Unconsciously, Teradyne is portraying a very negative value proposition to its customers. On one hand, it is showing that if the customer is as big as Alpha Tec, then irrespective of our policies and procedures, we will accept scope creep and modification in goal without delay in budget or timeline. In addition to this, for mid-sized customers, Teradyne exhibited that its core customers are more important as there was considerable delay in project completion for other clients as the entire company was consumed in delivering Alpha Tec’s project on time. In long term, this strategy would have a negative impact as customers enjoy working with project companies that allow scope creep and goal modification during the later stages of the project.

What changes do you recommend for the future product development projects?

Ideally, the top management should buy the ownership of all its employees, particularly team leaders, for implementing project management tools. In addition to this, senior managers should be trained on how to derive the right value from these tools and how to avoid pitfalls like over-commitment or unreasonable deadline etc. Moreover, metrics for project evaluation should be well comprehended by all top managers and project leaders so that they can intervene at the right moment, before it is too late. Furthermore, strong organizational culture should be formed so as to not only provide guidance and inspiration to employees, but also to customers regarding values of the organization. For example, scope creep should be avoided under all circumstances and all customers should be treated equally.

Critique the team, its organization, and its leaders.

First of all, the main issue was within the organizational culture as new strategy was implemented without any change in the culture. Secondly, no initial training was carried out to accustom employees with new project management tools. Thirdly, employees were not aware of how to derive the right value from those tools. Moreover, top management itself failed to comprehend the project evaluation metrics, which resulted in later intervention from them. Furthermore, the team became so focused on using project management tools and in minor details that they start overlooking the complete picture of the project. Last, team leaders started fooling themselves by playing around with tools like critical path analysis. They kept setting unreasonable deadlines, which only increased the pressure on team members and achieved nothing.