Sony Pictures Entertainment
Technical Project Manager - Production Portal
Process
Portal for Motion Pictures Group
Solution: Process Portal
Product: BEA WebLogic Portal™ 8.1, BEA WebLogic Workshop™, BEA JRockit™
Industry: Media
Partner: Intel
Business Challenge
The movie production process was often cumbersome and overly manual. Staff on-location lacked access to most systems; corporate personnel had to re-key data and manually track changes to documents.
Solution
Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) launched Production Portal, a dashboard that consolidates and launches a set of web-enabled applications using the Internet. It provides key production executives with production-related applications, customizable information, data and search functions, and entree to other Sony Pictures systems.
Results
The Production Portal on the BEA platform has driven substantial savings of executives' time, increased accuracy of production budget items, and more timely availability of budget data with which to make production decisions. On-location staff members now have online tools to facilitate their tasks and communicate efficiently with the studio.
Technical
Project Management Samples
Here are some examples of the project management techniques used at Sony Entertainment Pictures. The goal was to install an automated "props" rental system for the warehouse. Each week, a brief focused meeting was scheduled with the warehouse personnel, IT department representatives, and the vendor.
The weekly meetings were designed to be efficient, effective and as brief as possible. To achieve this, a detailed agenda was prepared and circulated in advance. Within 48-hours following the meetings, the minutes were prepared and circulated. This process was repeated until the project reached completion.
The Agenda contained five sections:
- Invitees
- Purpose of the meeting
- Status items
- Agenda items
- Decisions To Be Made
The Minutes contained six sections:
- Attendees
- Purpose of the meeting
- Schedule Impact
- Status items
- Action items
- Decisions Made
Sample Agendas & Minutes:
Provided below are sample correspondence docs that show a typical sequence of agendas and minutes. Generic names have been used and any specific information has been obfuscated to maintain confidentiality. Click the links below to see how a typical two week cycle of meetings developed.
- Agenda 1 for the meeting on week 17 detailing issues to be covered.
- Minutes 1 of the meeting on week 17 show decision and action items from meeting.
- Agenda 2 for week 18, showing results from last weeks' decisions and status of action items.
- Minutes 2 of the week 18 meeting, repeating any open items and detailing issues to be covered.