54 Chapter 1 • Introduction

for the new attraction. Disney’s efforts reflect a desire to Disney’s approach to the management of projects
do much more than provide a world-class ride experi- such as Expedition Everest is to combine careful plan-
ence; they demonstrate the Imagineers’ eagerness to tell ning, including schedule and budget preparation, with
a story—a story that combines the mythology of the Yeti the imagination and vision for which the company is
figure with the unique history of the Nepalese living in so well known. Creativity is a critical element in the
the shadow of the world’s tallest mountain. Ultimately development of new projects at Disney. The company’s
the attraction, with all its background and thematic ele- Imagineers include some of the most skilled artists and
ments, took nearly five years to complete. computer-animation experts in the world. Although it
Riders on Expedition Everest gain a real feel for is easy to be impressed by the technical knowledge of
the atmosphere that Disney has worked so hard to cre- Disney’s personnel, it is important to remember that
ate. The guests’ adventure starts by entering the build- each new project is approached with an understand-
ing of the “Himalayan Escape” tour company, complete ing of the company’s underlying business and attention
with Norbu and Bob’s booking office, to obtain permits to market projections, cost control, and careful project
for their trip. Overhead flutter authentic prayer flags management discipline. New attraction proposals are
from monasteries in Nepal. Next, guests pass through carefully screened and researched. The result is the
Tashi’s General Store and Bar to stock up on supplies creation of some of the most innovative and enjoyable
for their journey to the peak of the mountain. Finally, rides in the world. Disney does not add new attractions
guests pass through an old tea warehouse that contains to its theme parks frequently, but when it does, it does
a remarkable museum of artifacts reflecting Nepal’s cul- so with style!
ture, a history of the Himalayas, and tales of the Yeti,
which is said to inhabit the slopes of Mount Everest. It Questions
is only now that guests are permitted to board the Anan- 1. Suppose you were a project manager for Disney.
dapur Rail Service for their trip to the peak. Each train Based on the information in this case, what critical
is modeled after an aging steam-engine train, seating 34 success metrics do you think the company uses
guests per train. when designing a new ride? That is, how would
Over the next several minutes, guests are trans- you prioritize the needs for addressing project
ported up the roller coaster track, through a series of cost, schedule, quality, and client acceptance?
winding turns, until their encounter with the Yeti. At this What evidence supports your answer?
point another unique feature of the attraction emerges: 2. Why is Disney’s attention to detail in its rides
The train begins rushing backward down the track, as unique? How does the company use the “atmo-
though it were out of control. Through the balance of the sphere” discussed in the case to maximize the
ride, guests experience a landscape of sights and sounds experience while minimizing complaints about
culminating in a 50 mph final dash down the mountain the length of wait for the ride?
and back to the safety of the Nepalese village.
Copyright © 2019. Pearson Education, Limited. All rights reserved.

CASE STUDY 1.4

“Throwing Good Money after Bad”: the BBC’s Digital Media Initiative

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) recently DMI project was intended to save the organization
announced the cancellation of a major Information Tech- millions annually by eliminating the cost of expensive
nology (IT) project intended to update their vast broad- and outdated storage facilities, while moving all media
cast operations. The project, called the Digital Media content to a modern, digital format. As an example of
Initiative (DMI), was originally budgeted at £81.7 mil- a large-scale IT project, the plan for the DMI involved
lion ($140 million) and was developed to eliminate the media asset management, archive storage and retrieval
outdated filing systems and use of old-fashioned analog systems, and media sharing capabilities.
videotapes with their expensive archival storage. The The DMI project was begun in 2008 when the BBC
BBC is one of the world’s largest and most widely rec- contracted with technology service provider Siemens,
ognized news and media organizations; it is publicly with consulting expertise to be provided by Deloitte.
funded and under British government oversight. The Interestingly, the BBC never put the contract out for

Pinto, Jeffrey. Project Management: Achieving Competitive Advantage, EBook, Global Edition, Pearson Education, Limited, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rgu/detail.action?docID=5720015.
Created from rgu on 2022-01-23 16:10:37.
 Case Study 1.4 55

competitive bidding, reasoning that it already had a producing media; he did not waver from this view
10-year support contract with Siemens and trusted throughout these years.
­Siemens’ judgment on project development. As part This rosy view hid a deeper problem: the tech-
of this hands-off attitude, executives at the BBC gave nology was just not working. Different views emerged
Siemens full control of the project, and apparently lit- as to why the DMI was not progressing. To the “tech-
tle communication flowed back and forth between the nologists,” there was nothing wrong with the system;
organizations. The BBC finally grew concerned with the it did deliver working technology, but the project was
distant relationship that was developing between itself undermined by would-be users who never bought into
and the contractor when Siemens began missing impor- the original vision and who continually changed their
tant delivery milestones and encountering technical requirements. They believed that the DMI was failing
difficulties. After one year, the BBC terminated its $65 not because it did not work, but as a result of internal
million contract with Siemens and sued the company politics. On the other side were those who questioned
for damages, collecting approximately $47 million in a the development of the project because the technology,
court settlement. Still, losing nearly $20 million in tax- whether it had been “delivered” or not, never really
payer money after only one year, with nothing to show worked, certainly not at the scale required to make it
for it, did not bode well for the future. adopted across the whole organization. Furthermore,
Having been burned by this relationship with it was becoming evident that off-the-shelf technology
an outside contractor, the BBC next tried to move the existed in the marketplace which did some of what the
­project in house, assigning its own staff and project DMI promised but which, critically, already worked
manager to continue developing the DMI. The project well. Why, then, was the BBC spending so much time
was under the overall control of the BBC’s Chief Tech- and money trying to create its own system out of thin
nology Officer, John Linwood. It was hoped that the air?
lessons learned from the first-round failure of the proj- According to a news report, it was not until April
ect would help improve the technology and delivery of 2013 that events demonstrated the ongoing problems
the system throughout the organization. Unfortunately, with the DMI. During BBC coverage of the death and
the project did no better under BBC control. Reports funeral of Margaret Thatcher, news staff worked fever-
started surfacing as early as 2011 that the project was ishly to transfer old archived analog videotapes to a dig-
way behind schedule, was not living up to its promises, ital format in order to produce footage for background
and, in fact, had been failing most testing along the way. on the life and career of the former Prime Minister. So
However, although there are claims that the BBC was poorly did the new digital archive system work that it
well aware of the flaws in the project as early as 2011, was reported tapes had to be physically transported
the picture it presented to the outside world, including around London by taxi and subway system to get to
Parliamentary oversight committees, was relentlessly their locations while video transfer work was being car-
upbeat. The BBC’s Director General, Mark Thompson, ried out by private production companies. All this after
appeared before a committee in 2011 and told them the nearly four years working to develop the DMI!
DMI was definitely on schedule and was actually work- The failure of the system during Thatcher’s funeral
ing already: “There are many programs that are already was the final straw. In May 2013 the new Director Gen-
being made with DMI and some have gone to air and eral of the BBC, Lord Hall, announced the cancellation of
Copyright © 2019. Pearson Education, Limited. All rights reserved.

are going to air,” he told members of Parliament. the project and that the BBC’s Chief Technology Officer,
The trouble was, the project was not working John Linwood, was to be suspended pending an exter-
well at all. Continual failures with the technology were nal investigation into the management of the DMI proj-
widely known within the project team and company ect. It was later revealed that a senior BBC manager had
executives, but reports suggest that these concerns expressed grave doubts about the DMI to BBC Chairman
were buried under a flood of rosy projections. In fact, Lord Patten one year before the project was cancelled. He
a later report on the project by an outside consulting had also claimed that there was a “very significant risk”
firm suggests that throughout 2012 the deteriorating that the National Audit Office had been misled about the
fortunes of the DMI were not accurately reported either actual progress of the DMI in 2011. Other BBC executives
within management or, critically, to the BBC Trust. For had also voiced similar concerns for about two years
example, the BBC’s own internal project management before the DMI was abandoned. The final cost of the proj-
office issued a “code red” warning of imminent proj- ect to the BBC and British taxpayers has been estimated
ect failure in February that was not reported to the at about $160 million. BBC Trust member Anthony Fry
trust until six months later. The CTO, John Linwood, remarked that the DMI had been a “complete catastro-
maintained that the project did work and would lead phe” and said that the project was “probably the most
to a streamlined and more cost-effective method for serious, embarrassing thing I have ever seen.”
(continued)

Pinto, Jeffrey. Project Management: Achieving Competitive Advantage, EBook, Global Edition, Pearson Education, Limited, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rgu/detail.action?docID=5720015.
Created from rgu on 2022-01-23 16:10:37.
 56 Chapter 1 • Introduction

Members of Parliament, looking into the failure of A lengthy post-project analysis of the DMI’s fail-
the DMI, also had a number of very pointed criticisms of ure by Britain’s National Accounting Office identified
the project, the executive oversight of the DMI, and the a series of errors that all contributed to the fiasco. As
operations of the BBC in general. Margaret Hodge MP, part of its final report, the NAO noted that it was never
Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts, summed up clear where responsibility lay within the BBC for the
the project in her Parliament report: completion of the project; in other words, when con-
cerned parties asked to speak to those “in charge,” it
“The BBC’s Digital Media Initiative was a com- was never clear just who those people actually were.
plete failure. Licence fee payers paid nearly £100 This issue was made more significant as a result of the
million [$160 million] for this supposedly essential BBC losing a case brought against it by its former CTO
system but got virtually nothing in return. John Linwood. Even though Linwood was fired by the
The main output from the DMI is an archive cata- BBC, the judge found that he was not responsible for
logue and ordering system that is slower and more the failure of the DMI. The NAO report stated that the
cumbersome than the 40-year-old system it was BBC must make clear who is accountable for projects
designed to replace. It has only 163 regular users and define anticipated benefits at the start. Without a
and a running cost of £3 million [$5.1 million] a clear sense of benefits from a project such as the DMI, it
year, compared to £780,000 [$1.3 million] a year was impossible to evaluate whether stakeholders were
for the old system. receiving value for the work undertaken.
Bad planning, poor corporate governance, exces-
When my Committee examined the DMI’s prog-
sively optimistic projections, and a cloak of secrecy
ress in February 2011, the BBC told us that the DMI
regarding the real status of the Digital Media Initiative
was “an absolutely essential have to have” and
project all resulted in a very public black eye for one of
that a lot of the BBC’s future was tied up in the
the most respected broadcasting organizations in the
successful delivery of the DMI.
world. It is likely that the causes of the failure of the DMI
The BBC also told us that it was using the DMI to project will be debated for years to come, but at a mini-
make many programmes and was on track to com- mum this story should be a cautionary tale for organiza-
plete the system in 2011 with no further delays. tions developing sophisticated IT projects.37
This turned out not to be the case. [. . .]
The BBC was far too complacent about the Questions
high risks involved in taking it in-house. No single 1. What does the story of the BBC’s failed Digital
individual had overall responsibility or account- Media Initiative suggest to you about the impor-
ability for delivering the DMI and achieving the tance of carefully managing not only the project,
benefits, or took ownership of problems when but the “message” of the project? That is, why is
they arose. “benefits management” critical for project success?
Lack of clearly defined responsibility and account- 2. Successful project management requires clear
ability meant the Corporation failed to respond organization, careful planning, and good execu-
to warning signals that the programme was in tion. How was the absence of each of these traits
trouble.” shown in this example?
Copyright © 2019. Pearson Education, Limited. All rights reserved.

Pinto, Jeffrey. Project Management: Achieving Competitive Advantage, EBook, Global Edition, Pearson Education, Limited, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rgu/detail.action?docID=5720015.
Created from rgu on 2022-01-23 16:10:37.