Soft Skills for a Digital Workplace - Essay Example

I would proceed by setting up an interim plan and baselines for the project to ensure that there is a set of facts on the main categories of a project to compare the success. The baseline will contain reference points divided into five categories that are project start date, finish dates, work, costs, and duration of each project with my best estimates of each using the set plans. With the progress of the project, I will set up interim plans to fill the information on the start date, finish date, costs, work, and duration. From the interim plan comparison with the baseline, I will be able to know the progress of the project and provide the manager with detailed, accurate data on the progress of the project. My plan will be to provide the manager with a project progress report every Monday after the start of the project detailing the costs used for the week, the work done during the week, and the estimates of project progress for the coming week. The main tools that I will use in the course of reporting to the manager are interim and baseline plans based on the data from the budget, cost, time, and duration estimates from the project plan.
            During the start of the financial year, a new data management system was being installed in the company, and a colleague and I were tasked with the reporting of the progress of the project by the Management systems team to which I am the manager. Using baseline and interim plans, we were able to give weekly reports to the CEO over the six weeks duration of the project which was very successful. Every Monday morning, we ensured that we delivered a report to the CEO detailing the finish date, work completed during the previous week, and present plans for undertaking in the coming week. The project was lauded by the CEO during the manager's meeting after the system proved effective in managing the high data flow in the company.

The need for problem-solving skills
            Problem-solving skills are important for all team members because problem-solving skills by all team members increase team productivity at the workplace aids in avoiding the recurrence of problems, and result in professional effectiveness (Butterfield, 2009). When each member has problem-solving skills seeking an alternative solution is easy, increases the ability to cooperate as a team for the achievement of set goals, aids in understanding the severity of a given problem, and evaluates strategies of using available resources as a team to resolve the problem. When problem-solving skills are available to all members and not some it creates a conducive environment for reaching a consensus and making the team have a single goal focused on by all members allowing for effective and successful teams (Butterfield, 2009).

The other measures that will enable the employees to improve their analytical skills include encouraging employees to read books to improve their ability to have different perspectives, putting the employee in a team with employees who have analytical skills and they will learn from them and encouraging employees to try harder until they have better analytical skills at the workplace.