Ways in Which Theories of Project Management Fit into Real Life Practices - Case Study Example

An account discussing the fit between published theory in regard to project management and personal practice as a result of my participation in the Foods Organic project” Introduction An organization exists in the marketplace for the purpose of performing various types of work. The activities of an organization can be classified as projects or operations. However, in some cases, both of these may overlap and can share common characteristics. Projects are undertaken at all levels of an organization; this can involve a single person or thousands of individuals in the same project and the project duration differs accordingly. Some of the most common examples of a project are development of a new product or service, initiating and implementing a change in the structure, style or staffing of an organization, developing a new system of information or implementation of a new business process (Anthony and Govindarajan, 2007). Owing to the fact that projects appear in numerous forms, significance of managing these projects effectively has increased to a great extent. Project management can be defined as application of skills, knowledge, tools and techniques so as to comply with the requirements of the project. In general, there are five major phases of project management, which are initiation, planning, execution, controlling and closure (Andon, Baxter and Chua, 2007). In this report, a discussion will be carried out about ways in which theories of project management fit into real life practices. In order to do so, I will reflect upon my experience in the foods organic project, which I have completed in the recent past. The project was about developing a new store that will be located at the heart of Uxbridge. The aim of that project was to establish a store that reflects ‘organic’ and ‘healthy living’ culture. Discussion In this section of the study, I will reflect upon experiences that I have gathered while conducting the aforementioned project and will try to draw comparison with the theories of project management. However, before proceeding further into the analysis, I would like to elaborate about my position and the activities carried out by me during the program. I was the project manager as well as the team leader. I was responsible for accomplishing various tasks as well as for overseeing tasks carried out by the subordinates. Hence, the pressure on me was immense. Majority of the tasks of this project were performed by me as it was mandatory on my part. Scholars such as, Armstrong (2002), enumerate that a project manager is responsible for carrying out most of the planning and monitoring activities; but at times, he is also required to perform the operational activities. Contradicting this statement, Carmona and Gro¨nlund (2003) believe that carrying out these responsibilities depends upon capability and managerial ability of the person responsible for administering the project. Furthermore, according to Harris and Fleisher (2005), this also depends upon the team members with whom a project manager has to coordinate. For example, if team members are not skilful enough, it might lead to failure; but, an able project manager with his or her skills and technical knowledge can save the fate of that project singlehandedly. Therefore, in this context, I can say that I lack the ability to become a good project manager; but if the same is viewed from an alternate perspective, I can consider myself as an efficient and skilful project manager. The theory of project management describes that roles and responsibilities of a project manager are to develop a project plan, manage relationship with stakeholders of the project, manage the communication, administer entire team of the project, identify and mitigate project risks, schedule the project, create and comply with the allotted budget of the project, manage project conflicts and ensure timely delivery of the project to client/concerned authority. Hence, from this fact, it is evident that a project manager is responsible for carrying out diverse activities. Apart from the usual roles mentioned above, a project manager is also accountable for ensuring that each of the team members are aware of their roles and responsibilities and expectations that the management has from them. However, Ittner, Larcker and Meyer (2003) state that specificity of the roles and responsibilities of project managers depend upon size of the company, industry, nature of business, culture of the company and definitely, type of project. In the context of our project, activities undertaken by me were defining aim of the project, designing entire course of the project, preparing power point presentation for making subordinates aware of their roles and responsibilities as well as stating the performance expectations. Apart from the generalized view, some of the technical activities undertaken by me were costing of retail floor and outside look, renovation costing, costing of kitchen facilities, quality planning, total costing and finance management. In addition, delegation of tasks was also a vital activity for me. So, comparing the theories of project management with real life experiences pertaining to the area of roles and responsibilities of a project, I can deduce that there is huge resemblance between the published theory and real life application. Although the activities differ from one project to another, the fundamentals still remain the same. Deckop (2006) stresses on the fact that irrespective of the nature and size of a project, fundamental activities of a project manager remains unchanged. The theories, therefore, are consistent with real life experience. The following discussion here involves the challenges of a project and strategies that a project manager undertakes for mitigating those risks. The risks of a project can be defined as factors with the ability to negatively impact the progress of a project work and that lie outside of the project environment. Although it is beyond voluntary control, a company can still take preventive measures in order to reduce the exposure (Neely, 1998). The major problems that occurred in the course of our project were time management, lack of people attending meetings, different styles of work method, lack of quality in teammates’ work, lack of enthusiasm and motivation in the team and lack of communication between team members. The theory of project management states that problems of project management emerge in various forms and at various phases. For example, authors such as, Otley (1998), regards that risks of a project can be in the form of operational risks, financial risks, reputation risk or environmental risk. Apart from that, the author also pointed out that there are minor risks, which can gradually turn into a major issue and eventually affect progress of the project. He exemplifies that the risk of failing to assess the requirements of resources appropriately will ultimately lead a project towards its failure. In addition, Zeithaml (2010) mentions that the most important activity for minimizing and mitigating the possible risks of a project is to carry out a risk assessment plan. In this session, a manager will be able to identify all possible risks associated with the project. In the context of our project; being a project manager, I tried to motivate my subordinates through various approaches such as, praising their work and promising rewards; but after a while, their motivation seemed to fade away. Besides that, we formed our group late, which made us lose out on a couple of weeks’ worth of work. I believe for a project to be successful, the level of coordination needs to be high. The statement is supported by Bull and Compton (2006), where the author states that maintaining coordination among the team members as well as between the members and project manager is imperative. I believe that this is a failure on my part as it is the project manager’s duty to ensure harmony among project participants. Love and Bullen (2009) believe that if a project is suffering from poor coordination among the team members, the project manager should be held responsible. The author justifies this by stating that coordination among the diverse team members is one of the fundamental requirements. It has been found that success of a project relies upon team members; thus, emphasis should be put on development of a team. The model proposed by Tuckman (1965) comprises four stages of team development i.e. forming, storming, norming and performing; and foregrounds the significance of developing a proper team (Nagarajan, 2004). (Source: Tuckman, 1965) Being the project manager, I also went through the aforementioned stages in order to form the team. For example, in forming stage I tried to create strong bandings with the team members and in the subsequent steps I tried to analyse their skills and expertise with the aim of allocating relevant activities to the team members. I also tried to motivate them but I failed at times. This is also supported by Belbin Team Inventory theory, which states that success of a project or a team depends upon nine different team functions, namely plant, resource investigator, co-ordinator, shaper, monitor evaluator, team worker, implementer, finisher and specialist (Hobbs, 2009). (Source: Teamworkeurooppa, 2014) According to Belbin (2012), a team is not a simple bunch of individuals with job titles and specific designation, but a congregation of people, with certain roles and responsibilities. However, this statement does not hold true from my experiences. This is because most of the team members failed to perform their jobs effectively and as a result of that I needed to complete majority of the tasks. Lack of communication among the team members can be the major cause of the poor coordination. Moreover, I also felt void when team roles are being evaluated from the point of view of Belbin’s Team Inventory theory. There were absence of specialists, proper coordinator and resource investigators. Conclusion This piece of work was aimed at analysing the fit between published theories and real life practices in the field of project management. The reflective analysis has shown that the level of consistency between theories of project management and real life practices is very high. Almost all factors studied in theory were experienced by me, while functioning as a project manager. Therefore, I would like to conclude that the fit between published theory in regard to project management and personal practices owing to my participation in the Foods Organic project is highly consistent. However, when analysing from the point of view of Belbin’s Team Inventory theory, some disagreements were experienced. Reference List Andon, P., Baxter, J. and Chua, W.F., 2007. Accounting change as relational drifting: a field study of experiments with performance measurement. Management Accounting Research, 18, pp. 273-308. Anthony, R. and Govindarajan, V., 2007. Management Control Systems. Chicago: Mc-Graw-Hill IRWIN. Armstrong, P., 2002. Management, image and management accounting. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 13, pp. 281-95. Bull, M. and Compton, H., 2006. Business practices in social enterprises. Social Enterprise Journal, 1 (2), pp. 42-60. Carmona, S. and Gro¨nlund, A., 2003. Measures versus actions: the balanced scorecard in Swedish Law Enforcement. 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