Reflection Page

What project to do?

Sok Ying had proposed to the team to make "ERP Implementation" to be our project as she and myself  had gone through the Oracle 11i Implemenation in our previous company. This was to replace the standalone legacy systems that had been used by different functions or departments. Thus, data analysis was a very tedious task as we need to extract and compile data/information from different system.

The project was a big one as the duration of the project took about 1 year to implement. Further enhancement was done after its implementation.

We were from the planning department. As such, we were involved in the implementation of the Oracle 11i ASCP, ie Advanced Supply Chain Planning tool.  There were a lot of activities involved in the implementation.

Some examples of the tasks are as follows:

• For Data migration. Have to input information eg product family, product, resource, cycle time, into a spreadsheet. The data will then be downloaded by the IT guys who wrote the script for the data migration. Planners will then need to review and correct on any fallouts ie any data that failed to migrate over due to wrong setting and so others.
• Doing mock testing,
• Adoption and learning of the new system,

Steven
9May


Thoughts
If we will to work on a full ERP implementation, it may take about 1 year or more to complete. Thus, the team will propose to the sponsor that we will target to complete the "Planning and Procurement" module first.


Steven
23May


Review and correct
The team have reviewed through the feedback list from Janet. We have made some changes and correction but we are not so sure on some of them.

Need to review with Janet on 3Jun to clear our doubts and also to confirm whether what we have corrected is per her requirement in the feedback list.

Steven
30May


Actions
We have reviewed and made changes to the responsiblity matrix afer a brief discussion with Janet last week. We will focus 100% on planning and procurement and completed the matrix.

We wanted to continue to apply the WBS concept to costing. However,we think that is better to send the updated matrix for Janet to review first. Hopefully, there is no more changes to updated matrix and we will proceed to do the costing on a week day to complete for submission on 17th June. Even if there is changes to the matrix, we can still proceed and make changes along the way.

Sok Ying
14Jun


Conflicts
One of the important lesson that I learnt from project management is "Conflict". It is not an easy task to manage a project.. Every one have its own priorities, thoughts and approaches. But it is also critical that all conflicts or disagreements or thoughts be highlighted during the discussion, which is good, if we look at it postively. Some good ideas or potential problems may be identified. Thus, a project manager needs to have the necessary soft skills and "stamina" to manage the stakeholders. Bottomline, it is a tough but challenging job. And it pay well too.  :)

Steven 
16thJun


"Fruits" For Thoughts
We meet after work to discuss on the costing assignment. I thought that
it is not that difficult and we should be able to complete fast. In the
end, we spent 3hrs with a lots of discussion and arguments. Tough to be
involved in a project as a team but we need to manage the conflicts.

Sok Ying
16thJun


TeamWork
The most important key factor is communicate and teamwork.
During discussion of the project there’s bounce to have conflicts. There’s a need to ensure that we understood what we need to input into the project, clarified and get the best solution out of the brainstorm

Christine
16thJun


Thought of Learning
From beginning for starting this assignment, i feel like so lost about what need to input to the project. After discussing with team member and refer to the text book.Then we work toward the idea, seeking advice from Janet, then modify again, submit again..... This really spent a lot of time and energy to fine tune and keep our project on the right track.

From my thought, i think is quite complex and time consuming to handle a project from the stage initiation, planning,implementation, control and terminate cycle. (It just same as what we do now!!) The project manager and the team member will spent a lot of time in every cycle. Every stage require different action. So, i think that the project manager is the most critical person in the project. If the project manager make the wrong decision, it may caused the project failure.

Chew Peng
17Jun

Learning
We use the microsoft project to do the WBS activities and I find that  this tool is very useful for tracking projects timeline. I am glad that I get to learn a new tool which may be useful to my work next time.

Sok Ying
27th June


Project management? Future Career?
Working on the classroom assignment can only give us an superficial insight of what are the tasks and responsibilities of a project manager. It should be more complex, mind clogging and intriguing in the actual scenario. How do we proceed from here if we want to become one?

Steven
28Jun


Risk
Managing risk is part of project management. But it is also part of our daily life too.

Steven
11Jul


"LIFE" Project Management
We are actually practising "Project Management" in our "LIFE", working towards our dreams and goals. clearing one obstacles after another. We are actually PROJECT MANAGER ourselves.

Steven
19Jul


Project Closure
We have finally come to the end - "Project Closure". Tough and not easy. But the most important thing is we enjoy the learning process and ultimately the knowledge that we have gained.

Steven
22Aug