Gap Hk

Running head: GAP ANALYSIS: HARRISON-KEYES

Gap Analysis: Harrison-Keyes

University of Phoenix

Gap Analysis: Harrison-Keyes

Harrison Keyes a 100-year-old firm with decidedly old-fashioned ways is currently facing declining sales, decreased market share and weak profits.

Harrison Keyes vision to be the world's most dynamic publishing company through outputting innovative information solutions that are essential globally led to Harrison Keyes’s mission objective to provide essential information and insight that enables individuals, markets, and societies to perform to their fullest potential achieved through Harrison Keyes being fundamental to markets, constantly moving forward, operating through diverse leadership and generating consistent revenue and shareholder profits.

Harrison Keyes’s mission objective provided the impetus for change that was necessary for continued company growth and development and based on information contained in the Harrison Keyes’s executive summary which summarized the publishing industry and Harrison Keyes situation for the HK Board of Directors, who recognizing continued performance of the company mission by the company was in jeopardy and that HK was in need of revitalization.

The board decided upon a strategic objective to launch Harrison-Keyes into the era of 21st century publishing, increase stakeholder profitability and market share by launching an e-publishing initiative.

The essence of the initiative consisted of conversion from print to digital and consumer on-line purchasing options inherent in these two objectives were a myriad of steps that are required to make the project strategy and implementation a successful project that turns a profit.

Harrison Keyes is six months into the project since conception and the project is about to completely derail. Meg McGill the first CEO and champion of all things digital who outlined the initial implementation plan has been replaced by William Guardo who is unwilling to continue financing a poorly planned, out of control project that is fraught with unresolved issues.

Harrison Keyes’s head of the implementation team is Jan Peters who now has one month to regain project process control and close the project gap between success and failure.

The only way for Ms. Peters to regain project process control, and gain more time for project implementation is to close the gap and turn project issues into opportunities for project success. This paper will address several possible, previously unused options that can facilitate the process and place the project back on track.

Situation Analysis

Issue and Opportunity Identification

Harrison Keyes’s primary issue was losing project process control when project control is lost the entire project is jeopardized from the smallest phase to the assumed project implementation phase. Control or “involvement” can overcome most problems in small projects. But large projects need some form of formal control. Conversion from print to E-publishing and the generation of on-line published material is a large undertaking for a company with as many prolific works as Harrison Keyes.

Control holds people accountable, prevents small problems from mushrooming into large problems, and keeps focus. Control is one of the most neglected areas of project management. (Gray-Larson, 2005)

The opportunity for regaining project process control is to reevaluate the planning process and to use process management control tools that identify what is not working, then determining how much will it cost to make what is not working work, then assessing which of those same tools will expedite the turnaround most effectively to ascertain the requisite result.

Project control was lost from project onset due to shortsighted, non-strategic planning for data collection analysis, risks and mitigation, finance, reports and the reporting process for production and performance.

There were no control measures to garner information that assessed actual plans versus expected plans. Because plans seldom materialize as expected, it becomes imperative to measure deviations from the project plan to determine if action is necessary.

(Gray-Larson, 2005).

Harrison Keyes also failed to create organizational alignment and buy-in. Their marketing

campaign failed to effectively communicate the initiative possibly, because they did not fully understand the project and therefore was unable to excite consumers.

Additionally, agreement was not achieved with authors of the publishing house, a major faux-pax to be mediated and rapidly rectified because their collective published authors were the company’s’ foundation. Assumptions were made without intricate forethought and a major one was the assumption Asia Digital Printing would and could perform the transitional digital layout and formatting phases on schedule and on budget.

Without validation they were selected based on recommendation not a through investigation or the customary bid/proposal evidence of results process.

This particular assumption has stalled the project and with no contingency plan designed for quick adjustment and continued forward movement, project control is lost and spiraling into oblivion.

Harrison Keyes is a global institution and risk and mitigation planning should have included the possibility of natural disasters and funds allocated for such an event, especially when outsourcing an integral part of the projects’ planned implementation to another country.

An in depth and detailed SWOT analysis would have allowed a clearer view of the entire process and possibly provided for a far more prepared project performance overall.

The opportunity present for every HK project issue at hand is for the project leadership to galvanize the team into urgent, focused project turnaround action within the allotted time frame through clear communication about the direction they are headed, exciting stakeholders about the new journey and deciding what best practice project management control tools are needed