Fleur’s Flowers was started four years ago by siblings Matt and Sarah Harris.
The idea was to create an online flower store that delivered fresh flowers and
floral decorations nationally along with occasional ‘pop-up’ stores. In the new
business, Sarah focused on supplier sourcing and plant care while Matt focused
on sales and marketing.
Their business was successful and profitable in the first two years, largely due to
contracts for floral event decorations. In their third year, they got very busy thanks
to a viral video of a local wedding they supplied. Prospective global clients
started reaching out to the company to do similar work for their events. They
hired several part-time employees to help them with their floral business. But by
the end of the third year of operation, Fleur’s Flowers started experiencing critical
problems. They were: unable to leverage all the new employees effectively,
unable to deliver arrangements to their customers on schedule and unable to
provide quality blooms — time and money were being spent fixing defects in their
products and training new employees. Unable to control costs — their business
was not profitable in the third year.
Fleur’s Flowers saw a significant rise in issues, a lot of unpleasant “surprises”
were cropping up; business was down as new resources were hired, also some
of the projects were poorly estimated. The international clients were unhappy as
their decorations either arrived late or wilted. In some cases, the decorations
were a week or two late. Since the events were time-sensitive the order needed
to arrive on time and in great condition.
One of the new part-time employees hired by Matt and Sarah, Chelsea, had
taken a project management course at college. Chelsea was excited about the
discipline of project management and had intentionally selected a job with Fleur’s
Flowers as she saw an opportunity to use project management in a creative
discipline.
One day, Chelsea approached Matt and expressed her interest in helping the
company with its logistical problems as she explained that she had taken a
project management course. Matt was open to hearing what Chelsea had to say
about the problems the company was facing and invited her for a lunch meeting.
Over lunch he questioned why their small business which had operated and
implemented projects so successfully over the first two years was being
challenged significantly now. He specifically listed the problems they were facing
and asked for input to solve them. Chelsea asked for more time to research all
the issues but noted that Fleur’s Flowers, while being innovative, completed
projects without a roadmap or a project plan and lacked a disciplined approach to
project management. She noted that Matt and Sarah did not use any project
software for scheduling and they did not use tools or techniques to estimate,
budget or communicate with stakeholders. Finally, they had no processes in
place to manage project risks and quality. Impressed with this and other
conversations, Matt asked Chelsea if she would consider joining them as a
project associate or project manager on a full-time basis to help them introduce
project management practises and help them tide over their current crisis.
Chelsea accepted the offer! She has several key skills—she is an excellent
communicator with very good interpersonal skills and is detail-oriented. Within the
first three months in her new role as PM, she introduced formal project
management processes, created a PM manual and trained the employees to get
the work done well. Within nine months Chelsea had fully turned things around.
Due to proactive risk analysis and risk response planning, surprises and issues
were reduced. Communication with stakeholders was enhanced. Matt and Sarah
noted that the company was delivering projects on schedule, the quality
processes worked—and customers were happy with the arrangements.
Comment on the following aspects of the case study:
1. Why did Fleur’s Flowers struggle?
2. What were the specific PM solutions that were introduced by Chelsea that
worked? Why?
3. Why is there a need for project management in organisations?
4. Which of the 4 of 10 knowledge areas would best work? Why?
5. Fleur’s Flowers is a technology-integrated business, but Chelsea is not
technically knowledgeable, will she continue to be a successful project
manager?