Complete the project and leverage project successes in future endeavors

The team successfully completes the project ahead of schedule

After the first technical report is approved on material selection (rubber verses an elastomer), the team kicks into high gear to explore various elastomer substrates for the soft handles now that the team has decided that rubber is no longer on the design table. Rebecca calls various suppliers to get specifications on different substrates and holds meetings with the team to narrow down which materials will be pursued for manufacturing ergonomic prototypes. She stores her meeting minutes in the wiki. She could have created another place using the Meeting Minutes template to store team meetings, but for the time being, she keeps her minutes in the wiki that is already in her place. As suppliers email Rebecca with attachments on material specifications, Rebecca saves these attachments to the ErgoLine Library from IBM^® Lotus Notes^®.

Rebecca and Bill continue to add experimental plans to the wiki. Lucille coordinates experimental runs and ensures test time is reserved. She also assists Rebecca and Bill during experiments. Lucille sends Harry what he needs to perform quality tests, and she sends Dan prototypes to show the customer. Harry alerts the team when testing is complete in the blog and posts the data to the wiki. Based on these results, the team continues to refine the designs as necessary. Technical reports are written for every experiment and sent out for approvals. The wiki is used to manage time, structure meetings, hold project plans, create drafts of report content, discuss design modifications, and plan future experiments. The blog is used to remind the team of urgent experimental changes and other notifications. Customer feedback reports are also added for every prototype to the library. By the end of development, the team selects the designs and holds the development design review. Jim Lender gives his approval that the designs are ready to enter into pilot production with close development supervision. With development and manufacturing working so closely, the team is able to address the processing hurdles during the pilot production phase and ramp up to full production ahead of schedule.

The team leverages their experiences to help them on other projects

Throughout the project, the team learns how to work together in a new way. These new experiences resulted in a successful project and allowed each team member to establish new contacts across departmental boundaries. Rebecca started working on a report to share her experiences with places and how she can use places in the future to help her complete projects faster. Bill and Harry began to design templates that would tailor plant initiatives. Dan talked to his manager, Simone, about creating marketing places for each product to keep track of customer issues and concerns. Based on the success of the ErgoLine project, the management team decides to develop a standardized process for using places in conjunction with various project management techniques under investigation. To standardize this process, management will use the latest project on developing the next iteration of ergonomic tools as the pilot for trying out these project management techniques.