Friday - December 16, 2005: Home in Ottawa
You are a project manager at SNE Heavy Equipment.
You have just returned from a two-week trip from Barbados where you closed a very successful, well-managed project. You had
given the team a well-deserved end of project party and released them from the project. On checking your voice mail at home,
you see you have two messages. The first one is from the company president, William G. Pepper III who wanted to thank you for
a job well done. He thought the write-up in the Thursday's newspaper, The Mop and Pail, was great publicity for the company.
You suppress a smile
and check the next message. Your smile disappears. The message is from your boss, Director of Consulting.
"Welcome back, I couldn't get you on your cell. Guess you must have been on the plane. Look, we have a situation. Project Miner has hit an all time low. The clients are really unhappy with progress and the deliverables so far. In addition, performance is pathetic and we are on the hook. The project manager is Alfred E. Newman. You may know him already. I know you just got back but can we meet about this on Monday? ASAP? I may need you to go to Iqaluit by Tuesday and get us out of this. You have a good weekend."
You ignore the last remark and replay the message. Alfred had never been a good project manager, but it may not be his fault.
The clients here were Cold Stone Minerals, a conglomerate of 3 leading mining companies. You knew that the project in Nunavut
was critical but you have no idea what could have gone wrong. Why do you have to get this disaster project? Iqualuit up in the
far north of Canada in December must be nice you surmise.
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Introduction
