• Explain a situation where a project plan changed at a late stage and you had to adapt.

Situation

I studied Innovation Management in the Management Department as part of the humanities aspect of my course at Imperial. The coursework for this involved working in a team with students from different departments. We needed to prepare a research document detailing the management strategies one company uses for innovation. 2 students, being part of the chemical engineering department, made a case for basing our report on Proctor and Gamble, so we agreed and went about researching it. However after we had done a fair amount of research and planning, we decided that the number of products that P&G develop, with the number of brand names it uses, and the volume of material available, made it difficult to write a comprehensive, focused report.

Task

At this stage we had already invested time and effort into P&G and were quite far into the time allowed for the project. However, as a group, we felt that the mobile phone operator Hutchison 3 was a more suitable choice, and more of the group were doing degrees about electronics, software and tech generally. The research and preparation we’d done went out the window and we started again.

Action & Result

I had to adapt because the time required to make such a big shift was a big investment, when I already had time demands from other course works. In effect, this adaption meant longer hours and less sleep, in order to keep on top of things. I wanted to get good marks, and in order to achieve that, I needed to pay time and effort. It meant more reading and research, however this time it was more interesting to me personally, and so I was more motivated to do it. The result was a quite detailed and thoughtful 16 page report about the innovation that Hutchison 3 employs.