3 minutes
Discussion of Project Management Approaches for Ecological Vehicles
From the point of view of a car manufacturer that wishes to create a network of recharging stations for its ecological vehicle, whatever it is electric or hydrogen cell-based, it will find some elements that it cannot fully control, such as:
- (1) Public reception of the new technology
- (2) Economic situation
- (3) Public policies.
Those three factors are not the same in all countries and can even change inside the same country’s regions.
For example, a newly elected government could push the decisions’ ecological agenda. A marketing campaign could shift public reception, or an economic recovery could push a large part of the population to change their current vehicle.
Even though some elements could be influenced to some degrees by a car manufacturer, employing the launch of marketing campaigns, organize informative meetings and fund congress with public representatives and ecological organizations to explain the advantages for their citizens of introducing an environmentally friendly technology for transportation, all elements mentioned cannot be fully controlled by the car industry.
Keeping the previous discussion in mind, we can see that the market situation will impact the feasibility of developing the infrastructure for electric cars.
Due to the high changing environment, the requirements are not fixed: the number of charging stations, distribution across the region and timeline is not clear, while the goal of expanding the technology of ecological vehicles is the only certainty, we can develop the project using an organic approach. Going further and applying the research (Fernandez, 2016), the recommended method is an adaptive strategy, such as agile, due to the known goal and unknown requirements.
The overall project, described above, directed by an organic approach, could dictate the go or hold the decision to invest in a region, as the gates described in Block 5 (Fortune, 2018).
Management should review those decisions annually if a factor is used to make previous decision changes and the amount of effort in a period invested in introducing the technology.
The go decision will translate into the installation of new charging stations, that could be the property of the car manufacturing, directly or creating a new company for that purpose, but we should also consider reaching agreements with current petrol stations, such Shell, or even starting a franchise model, where the car manufacturer will provide the know-how of building and running the station, while a third party will manage and fund the process of building and maintaining the station.
Either way, the installation of a new charging station, after some initial errors, is a process highly repetitive, with well-defined requirements and goals and therefore, we consider a linear approach to be the acceptable form of developing such a project.