Case study:
Stitch Fix- The future of Smart Fashion
In the past award winning and other fashion designers were responsible for making clothes. Inspiration can come from nature, life on the streets of large cities, culture, and maybe even architecture.
Stitch Fix has decided to let artificial intelligence do the hard work and design clothes for modern wardrobes. Machine learning algorithms use customer feedback to create clothing designs that appear to fit the demand and desire of individuals. This is essentially the personalization of the fashion industry. Millions of data points translate into recommendations and personalized styles of garments.
The company started with data from San Francisco, California, and has spread throughout the world. One of the team has had an inspiration after seeing animal pajamas on another website. In response to this, a new project team is being created at Stitch Fix for a project looking at the feasibility of selling pet clothing and accessories online.
The executives are not yet convinced that the project is worthwhile. They have suggested that you work with Deloitte's predictive project analytics team to gain insight into the risks of such a project and how best to make it succeed. As an incentive to perform really well, the team has been told that succession planning will be occurring and some of them are in line to lead new projects.
Question 1:
Reflect on the predictive project analytics (PPA) and explain how the five stages of PPA will apply to the animal clothing project. The stages are
I. Stakeholder Interviews and structured document review
II. Inherent risk and complexity assessment (how would the complexity profile look)
III. Predictive analytic project review:
• Also suggest what other types of projects could be compared with this one
IV. Analysis and synthesis (aggregation of output)
V. Report findings
Question 2:
Cultural fit and inclusiveness- You will have to add new team members to the project. Explain how you could promote inclusiveness within the team so the new members feel welcome, and how you will attempt to understand if the new members are a good cultural fit within the company.
Question 3:
Apply Tuckman's Theory to the development of the new Stitch Fix project team in terms of hypothetical examples of relationships and decisions of the team at each of these stages; forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning.
Question 4:
As an incentive to perform really well, the team has been told that succession planning will be occurring. Explain how you will perform the succession planning (i.e. apply the different steps). Explain the benefit to the company of succession planning.