R&D Project Risk Management in PG IEC LV-Motors and Generators

This thesis explores the views of the global project implementation at the product development department. The large case company operates globally in various industry segments. Project plan documents are made by one or more persons. The plans give the purpose of the project and estimated goals and timeline. This thesis aims to find out the project management risks on global projects. The list of issues that can go wrong in projects is long, for example an inexperienced project manager can make poor estimations of the project. In addition, resources can be selected wrongly, and the persons expertise might not fit the purpose. If the project preliminary study is made poorly the project requirements might be not recognized. Without management support, the project is almost impossible to be executed well. This thesis investigates the risk perceptions of global R&D organization in different locations globally from management viewpoint. The study also determines whether there are differences concerning the opinions of risk importance between the management and the project manager. Lessons can be learned from every project, even if the project is a failure. Many companies do not document lessons learned because employees are reluctant to sign their names to documents that indicate they made mistakes. Thus, employees end up repeating the mistakes that others have made. Lessons learned from every project is mandatory if the company wants to learn from the past and really want to improve their project competence. The results of this thesis are that projects that move too quickly to the implementation phase are challenging or even impossible to keep on schedule and the budget is often exceeded. The current project management model needs to be updated to meet global R&D requirements. As a result of the thesis work it was found that the risks of project implementation are too rapid a start of project implementation. The implementation begins with incomplete basic and basic information. In addition, the resources allocated to a project are often too small or at least do not allow for a shortage of any person. Placing people globally in a project team also poses its own challenges in project implementation, but the company culture is evolving in the right direction day by day