The importance of post-mortems in construction projects

Abstract: Organisations in the construction industry are frequently faced with the challenges of not achieving the set targets with reference to late project completions, exceeding the budget and undesirable quality of work due to poor workmanship. By including postmortems as best practice, organizations are likely to mature as they can make considered decisions and further enhance the management of future projects. The purpose of this research is to identify the key factors of effective and successful project post mortems that organisations in the construction industry can implement in management of future projects. The research further aims to identify the benefits these organisations can gain from the project post-mortems. The research scope is limited to organisations executing construction projects in Gauteng, South Africa. This research adopted a quantitative research approach using a structured closeended questionnaire as a data source. The target population of the research was 150 consisting of various stakeholders with experience in the construction projects such as project managers, construction managers, project engineers, construction supervisors. The 93 research sample participants for the questionnaire were randomly selected through the South African Council for the Project and Construction Management Professions (SACPCMP) database. The research quantitative data was collected and analysed using an online Google Form survey tool. Cronbach’s coefficient was used to measure the internal consistency of the research questionnaire. Chapter 4 discussed the analysis of the information obtained from the research questionnaire which included identification of the key factors and benefits of successful and effective project post mortems. The key factors were broken down into two categories, People aspects and Systems aspects. The research results suggest that though project mortem is a beneficial tool for organisations to review their projects, there is challenge with the clear procedures on how to conduct project review meetings or workshops and a lack of drive or instruments to employ lessons learned from past experiences.M.Phil. (Engineering Management

Product development process postmortem assessment

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; and, Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1997.Includes bibliographical references (p. 70-81).by Peter N. Kacandes.S.M

Being creative is mandatory:experiences of communication in game development from the perspective of creative employees

Abstract. Although game development is a form of software development, it cannot be compared directly to traditional software development. The audio-visual elements of games and their fundamental requirement to be “fun” make them exceptionally challenging to implement. Traditional software development has been extensively studied for decades, but research on game development is still in its early stages. More research is needed on game development because traditional software development processes and methods may not directly fit the needs of the gaming industry or may even be harmful. This thesis answers the question of how professionals who work in creative jobs in the gaming industry experience communication and feedback in the game development process and what factors they consider to be obstacles to the process. An interview study was conducted with six Finnish game developers as part of this thesis. Many of the interviewees also worked as leaders of creative workers. The interview material was subjected to a qualitative content analysis, and the results were compared with literature. The analysis revealed that creative workers consider communication and its quality to be an important part of their work. It was a source of encouragement and motivation for them, as well as a tool for ensuring the quality of their work and guidance. It was noteworthy that communication difficulties, such as those related to work instructions or feedback, were considered by the interviewees to be obstacles that slowed down the game development process. Other obstacles included poor project management and planning. Good communication is one of the most important pillars of the game development process. It helps ideas to grow by sharing a common vision and navigating through the toughest challenges. If we better understand what game development team members see, experience, and feel, we can help them thrive and persevere in their work. This can produce better games, successful companies, and happier people behind them

Beyond the Win: Pathways for Policy Implementation

When it comes to policy, a lot of attention is given to "the win." Whether it is something new and big like the Affordable Care Act, a piece of legislation in a large federal omnibus bill, or inclusion of critical language in a state policy, seeing the fruits of advocacy efforts put into law makes advocates and champions feel that their hard work, often many years in the making, has paid off.However, in reality, "the win" is just the beginning -- a necessary first step in a much longer and equally as fraught process of policy implementation. Once a policy is created, there are numerous factors that shape and determine how that policy is implemented -- and ultimately, the impact it will have -- regardless of how well the policy is formulated. Some of these factors include rulemaking, funding, capacity of local implementing agencies, and fights to repeal or modify wins, among many others.And, just as in the case of "the win," advocacy plays an important role in shaping implementation whether in advocating across these factors or participating in ongoing monitoring over time. Interestingly, while the role of advocacy in agenda setting, policy formulation, and policy adoption has been widely explored in theory and practice, the role of advocacy in the policy implementation process has received less attention in the literature.To learn more about the role of advocacy at the policy implementation stage, ORS Impact spoke with organizations that engage in, or provide funding for, advocacy efforts at the state and/or federal level. We focused on the following questions:When had advocates played a positive role in policy implementation?When had implementation not gone as well as expected, and what did advocates take away from that?Our conversations yielded important learnings about the unique characteristics of, and range of approaches to, advocacy efforts during the implementation phase. The two following scenarios illustrate some of the different types and levels of advocacy intervention, as well as the results they produce, to demonstrate the ways advocacy can play out when shifting from policymaking to implementation

Learning through business unit failure: a study of individuals and mid-level managers

Research on business failure focuses primarily on entrepreneurs and largely ignores individuals and mid-level managers who comprise most corporate populations. This study aimed to mitigate this gap by exploring how 15 individuals and mid-level managers working in a Fortune 50 technology company experienced failure and how their beliefs impacted their experience and learnings. Qualitative interview data were analyzed using a schema from the literature. The results suggested that emotional regulation, belief in personal agency, and separation of self from work supported learning and positive outcomes. Future research would create deeper insights into the social impacts on emotions and sensemaking and the importance of dynamics such as relative power

DATA INSECURITY LAW

By broad consensus, data security laws have failed to stem a rising tide of data breaches. Lawmakers and commentators blame these failures on some combination of underenforcement and the laws failure to recognize the full range of data breach harms. Proposed solutions would augment or expand existing data security laws. These proposed solutions share a fatal flaw: they are rooted in traditional theories of deterrence by punishment. Data security laws come in three forms: duties to protect data, duties to notify consumers after a breach, and post-breach remedies. Almost every data security law is enforced through sanctions, most of which are applied after a company discovers a data breach. In theory, companies increase their data security efforts to avoid sanctions. While appropriate for companies that purchase software, this approach is ineffective when applied to companies that build and provide software as an online service. In the cloud context, improving cybersecurity practices increases expected sanctions. And the cloud context matters. Online data security implicates almost all personal data; online services hold the lion’s share of personal data and offline firms rely heavily on cloud software to operate their businesses. This Article calls for a new approach to data security regulation, founded on a systemic view of data security practice. By focusing on system-level incentives instead of individual outcomes, lawmakers can bring data security law back into harmony with policy goals

Learning from research and development projects / the role of post-project reviews

Successful innovation depends to a high degree on an organization’s ability to develop an effective Research & Development (R&D) process and during the last decades many companies have adopted Stage-Gate® or similar methodologies. Although such methodologies are credited with significantly improving R&D results at many companies, there is still potential for improvement, if organizations can learn from projects. Each and every R&D project should not only result in a successful new product but also generate learning for the organization, because this has a high importance for the competitive advantage of an organization. Post-project reviews (PPRs) are recognized by both practitioners and academics as an appropriate mechanism to stimulate project-to-project learning in R&D project teams. However, PPRs are used by relatively few companies, and those that do utilize them often fail to do so adequately. Surprisingly, although PPRs are widely perceived to be a useful tool, empirical research on how they can best be used and how they support learning within a project team is very limited. This thesis addresses this gap in the extant knowledge and describes five in-depth exploratory case studies, which investigated how PPRs are conducted, how they are perceived by R&D managers and the project-to-project learning that can result from PPRs. Based on a complex research design which combines qualitative and quantitative data from documents, interviews and the observation of PPR meetings, the results show that current PPR practices vary much across different organizations. Furthermore, R&D managers perceive PPRs as important for learning in R&D project teams but difficult to manage effectively. An important result was also that tacit knowledge and experiences play an important role when analysing project-to-project learning. Although the operationalization of tacit knowledge is difficult, the detailed analysis of lessons learnt and metaphors used allowed to gather conclusions on the supporting role of PPRs for the creation and transfer of both explicit and tacit knowledge

The use of post mortem analysis in game development

Post mortem analysis (PMA) is a method of development retrospection that has found its way into software development. PMA was the topic of a number of research papers in the 90s and early 2000s, but the research has since moved on to other subjects, despite leaving the discussion on some areas of PMA unfinished. Notably, the unsatisfactory rate of PMA adoption in the industry was identified but not addressed, while the new lightweight method of PMA was developed but not revisited with experience from the industry. PMA research is also very limited on the subject of game development, despite its interesting and unorthodox ways of utilizing PMA reports. The thesis aims to study the adoption of PMA in the game industry, with a focus on the game industry’s PMA adoption rate and the PMA methods currently being used. Software development has trended towards more agile methodologies in the last decades and game development industry in particular is often noted to only use very lightweight or even ad-hoc methodologies during development, so the game industry offers a good viewpoint for studying if the traditional PMA methods are still in use and how they may have changed over the years. Besides examining PMA adoption and methods in modern game development, this thesis also goes through the uses of PMA reports in game development. Game developers have publicly released hundreds of PMA reports, which is not a common practice in traditional PMA. The goals that the game developers have for the public reports also differ from the traditional ones. This thesis will focus particularly on public PMA report usage in game development research and the thesis will include a literature analysis on several game development research papers. The analysis shows that the game development research on PMA reports is consistent with other research and that it can also be complementary to other research, though limited in the discussed topics. The study also features a questionnaire survey aimed at Finnish game industry professionals. The survey helps to answer the research questions of this thesis as it shows that PMA is a common practice and that the PMA method in modern game development has some similarities with traditional methods though it has adopted new lightweight practices in some aspects. The survey also brings to light that even though public PMA reports are well known in the games industry, the common uses for PMA reports in the industry have not changed from the orthodox uses presented in the prior research

An Analysis of Intelligent Failure within Corporate Entrepreneurship

Intelligent failure occurs when an entrepreneurial initiative falls short of its anticipated performance. It provides valuable new knowledge to the organisation and is recognised as an important factor in long-term corporate entrepreneurial success. This thesis is located within the domain of corporate entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial failure, and explores the various processes of intelligent failure. The specific aim of this thesis is to learn how organisations manage intelligent failure. Research takes an inductive approach with the predominant use of a qualitative methodology and, as part of a multiple case study strategy, research is carried out in six organisations operating in differing sectors within the UK. Findings indicate that the organisations often fail to manage intelligent failure. There is little evidence of a strategic approach to learning from failure and, where learning occurs, it is predominantly unstructured. This is significant because literature consistently argues that a structured process is required to manage learning from failure successfully. This research recognises that structured processes may be more effective than unstructured processes when looked at in isolation. However, this thesis argues that unstructured mechanisms do have inherent value. Therefore, when organisations develop failure management processes, a dual path may be considered, which might extract value from both systems as is contextually appropriate. This may enable organisations to maximise their ability to learn from failure. This thesis adds to existing management theory in the corporate entrepreneurship domain. In specifically focusing on the structured and unstructured forms within the process of intelligent failure, this thesis addresses a gap in current literature. It also adds to existing literature that centres on the practical management of the learning from failure process

Communication Structures in the Design Phase of Lean Project Delivery

Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es, eine Methode zu entwickeln, welche die kontinuierliche Verbesserung von Kommunikationsstrukturen in der Planungsphase komplexer Bauprojekte unterstützt. Dazu werden für die erfolgreiche Anwendung der Methode die Anforderungen Integration und Flexibilität des Projektteams definiert, sowie die Erreichbarkeit der Anforderungen in einer Fallstudie mittels Social Network Analysis nachgewiesen. Darauf aufbauend wird die Methode basierend auf Lean Management entwickelt und in Fallstudien erfolgreich getestet