The Department of Operations and Supply Chain Management organized a Guest session by Mr.Rajesh.SAngal, Associate Vice-President, Tata Consulting Engineering. Mr.Rajesh has for Mahindra, ION Exchange Ltd, Reliance Industries into PMO, Procurement, Legal, Finance and other sectors, have mentored more than 2500 students
The session started with a disclaimer that we need to put on our hats of Project Owner( Somebody who invest their own money in the project) , and understand the whole session with the same perspective. Followed by an exercise where two pictures were given named as A and B. And it was asked, by which medium (Car, Helicopter, Ship, Pencil, Spacecraft) you would go from place A to place B. Everyone started giving their opinions from the given options.
The next question which was followed is“Did anyone think why are we travelling from place A to place B?”
Idea behind this exercise was to let students understand that it is more important to know the purpose behind the project rather than knowing how to start a project. Projects are just additional expansion. Ideas come first, sometimes money or sometimes a blend of both.
Mr.Rajesh briefed on Vision forms strategies and strategies form Portfolio which fulfils multiple business cases. He shared his experience on Portfoliomanages projects, programs and operations. Also detailed how Projects can turn anything around of an organization Few important components of Portfolio are Optimisation, Prioritisation and Balancing.
Another interesting activity conducted by Mr. Rajiv with a blend of Fact and Fictional was to consider Botswana, an African country as under developedin sectors like education, women empowerment and so on. It was said that we have to imagine due to certain global warming issues and luck there was a sudden change which brought rain, diamonds which had greater potential to raise the economy.
Purpose of this Activity is to make students understand that people get so busy in projects, programs and operational work that they forget about Company’s Vision
The Business Case & Risk Management:-
A 100 0r 1000 pages document can be prepared when it comes to business case. For an expected outcome there has to be inputs, which make a model of the business case. Example of business cases are Increase in power plant efficiency, marketing, territories, competition, backward or forward integration, importance of military, calamity, new regulations and compliance.
Portfolio Component Qualifiers give push to the creation of model which brings the right output. Also models do not take decisions, people do. So it’s up to people who decide with which constituent they have to go to create business case model.
Session also gave insights on Risk Integration h- Forward and Backward. Backward takes place when make or buy decisions may have gone wrong. Prestige projects have gone wrong due to improper implication of these two strategies. An example of Backward Risk Integration would be subway growing wheat in farms for its bread. And an example of Forward Integration would be Reliance getting into the Fuel sector after getting into the power and energy sector.
Also a discussion, was held that should we believe experts known as opinion shapers, who create hype in the market by talking very confidently. Following is the image showing two different analysis in the same time period, at one hand being 25000 and on other being 6000.
Conclusion:-
You should create your own risk analysis. It will be advantageous to your own business if you act according to your own understanding. Following are the risk factors one should consider before coming to decision making.