Lack of Project Management Skills Among the Team Members - Essay Example

?Project Management has become an extremely important field for all kinds of organizations. Almost every organization requires Project Management at some stage of their operation, usually at the beginning. "Project management brings together and optimizes the resources necessary to successfully complete the project. These resources include the skills, talents, and cooperative efforts of a team of people; facilities, tools, and equipment; information, systems, and techniques; and money." writes Marion E. Haynes (HAYNES, Marion E., 2002, p.3). Project Management includes the planning, controlling, monitoring and analyzing a project from every aspect right from the beginning till its very end. It also deals with motivating and managing all the people involved. The ultimate aim of project management is to complete the assigned project within the agreed time, cost and performance (KNUTSON, Joan and Bitz, Ira, 1991). The key players of a project include the client, the users, the project control groups, the project manager(s) and the stake holders (HEALY, Patrick L., 1997). The client is the person who pays for the project from the beginning till its end. It is the client for whom the project is being conducted. The users are those which will the run the project after the completion. For example, after the completion of a new product facility, those who will be running it, will be its users. These users are required to be considered during the project and some of them should be represented during the project so that they can contribute their skills. The project control group is a committee which usually has a number of representatives from various sections. The contractor is one who conducts the project management task for the client. There stakeholders are all the persons who are affected by the project. The Project Manager is the person who manages the whole project. His ultimate duty is to successfully complete the project as per the requirement of the customer. The success or failure of a project majorly depends on the project manager. Being a project manager is a daunting job. The complexity of the job depends on the nature of the project. All the projects does not require same output, therefore project managers are usually selected on the basis of their prior work experiences, the type of industry they mostly dealt within, their educational and technical background etc. The Project Manager constitutes a team at the start, which should have all the required members for doing various tasks included in the Project. For example, when the state appoints a Project Manager for establishing a fire service in a new town, the Project Manager should have labor for infrastructure construction, finance department to keep check and balance, logistic department to bring necessary materials for construction, administrative department to see who is working to what extent and assigning tasks, engineering persons to design the infrastructure, decide on what vehicles to be bought for the service and IT persons to develop the network for complaint receiving. To constitute the team members and to work smoothly and efficiently on project, project managers need the full support of functional managers. The functional mangers are those which are working on the actual operations of the organization and are appointed for longer period of time. Project managers are appointed for specific tasks, after completion of which, their duties are no longer required. Functional managers expect their departments to exist indefinitely and they need resources for full-time while project exist for definite period and needs resources for a temporary period of time (HAYNES, Marion E., 2002, p.3). The importance of collaboration between functional and project managers can be elaborated with the example of expanding an airport services. Project managers might need people from functional managers who can tell the different locations of the airport. He might require info about the idle timing so that he can carry construction work so that flights are not disrupted. He may ask functional managers about the current design of transporting the passengers from the airport to the locations of plane, the process of luggage transportation, the locations and systems of plane parking, and may ask to provide some functional labors to work temporary for project team to accomplish various tasks. Without proper collaboration with functional staff, it is nearly impossible sometime to conduct a project work as in this example of airport expansion. Project managers are usually bound with restrictions on some areas because it is believed that they may not be expert in specialized job such as financial control, legislative decisions, and other specific areas (HEALY, Patrick L., 1997). This is strongly condemned by project management professionals, claiming that this usually hinders their work process and does not effect negatively in any other way. Project managers should know the various models, concepts and management techniques in order to meet the most important criteria of a project which are time, cost and performance. They should have the hard and soft skills and apply them appropriately throughout the life cycle of the project. The hard skills are the technical skills which are necessary for various jobs involved in the project. Generally, the hard skills of a project depend on the nature and requirement of the project. It deals with subject such as quality management, cost control, risk management, budget estimation, tender analysis, procurement, earned value analysis etc. The soft skills are called the “General Management Skills”, which helps the project manager in better dealing with the team members, building strong relationship with people involved, effectively communicating with the stakeholders, managing conflict, developing and maintain passion and energy within team members, and leading the team etc (LOCK, Dennis, 2007). The hard and soft skills are mandatory to be carried by a project manager. These skills are defined in greater detail below within the life cycle explanation part. A project passes from a cycle of phases which is generally called “Project Life Cycle”. Life cycle of small projects are usually straightforward and does not involve much of capital expenditure where as large projects involved much of complication and therefore, they are to be designed with greater sophistication and details, and thus include greater number of stages (LOCK, Dennis, 2007, pp.9 - 10). A typical Project Life Cycle is consists broadly of four stages of development which are Project Initiation, Planning Stage, Execution and Implementation and the Closure (WESTLAND, Jason, 2007). All of these stages require different skills and models of project management. Example to be carried in explaining the project life cycle, skills and other concepts: A telecommunication company which was earlier providing 2G network services, now wants to shift to 4G networks and for this, the company has outsourced the whole task to a contractor, or to make it simple, to a project manager. The initiation stage requires the project manager to define firstly business problem, the scope and approach of the project in the document namely Project Charger (Method123, n.d.). “The business problem in our case is updating the current 2G technology with 4G to provide advance telecommunication services to the users.” The team members are selected in this stage for different department and nature of work (KNUTSON, Joan and Bitz, Ira, 1991, pp.17-20). In our example, the members will include telecommunication engineers, tower erecting persons, radio frequency experts, IT persons, Finance and Admin etc. The PM needs to decide what tools, equipment and items would be need during the project and what are the best sources to obtain them? It requires a feasibility study to figure out whether the profitability of the project. In our case, when will the cost of converting into 4G infrastructure will be overcome by the profit derived from it, and what are the economic benefits of converting to 4G connection. The PM needs to figure out if there is need of obtaining people from functional department or not? This stage requires forecasting of budget and time that will be used by the project. After all these things, Project Office is set in the most suitable location which should be convenient place for maximum number of people involved in it. In the next phase of Planning, the complete planning is done. A project plan is developed which outline the activities involved during the project, the dependencies and timeframes of the tasks (BARRON, Merrie and Barron, Andrew, 2009). These plans are basically created for managing the time, cost, performance and risk which will eventually help in managing the internal and external persons involved in the project. The hard skills, as mentioned by Jason Westland in his book “Project Management Life Cycle” that are required in this stage are creating: A Project Plan (identifies phases and tasks, determine the inter-dependencies and include time frame of various activities) Resource Plan (helps in identifying resources such as labor, number of people for different tasks, equipments and their quantities, material etc) Financial Plan (it helps in setting your budget against the expenditure) Quality Plan (helps in setting quality targets by identifying client's requirements, setting criterias and standards for deliverables etc. For example, the number of towers and the power of each tower etc) Risk Plan (helps to analyze the different risk factors involved and identify proper procedures to reduce the risk to the least amount. Examples of risk, in our case, may be a sudden change of government policy regarding telecommunication sector, a sudden levy of tax in 4G sector etc) Communication (it helps in communicating the right message to the right people and proper flow of information among all the members) Procurement plan (helps in dealing with external suppliers which eventually ensure buying the right product from right place) In the third stage of Execution and Implementation, all the activities planned in the second phases are executed properly. The people involved carry their respective task and the progress are reported through proper channels to the supervisors and eventually to the project manager (BARRON, Merrie and Barron, Andrew, 2009). Using these information, the project manager control the team members and put them on the right track if required. The skills required are those of monitoring and controlling. The project managers should observe the activities and make correction where necessary. The team members must constantly be motivated and directed toward the goal. Conflicts are normal occurrences in projects which can be dealt with negotiations skills. Negotiations should provide win-win solution (PORTNY, Stanley E., 2010). The hard skills required in this phase include time management so that the project is completed on time, cost management so that the budget does not exceed forecasted cost, quality management so that the client is happy, risk management to avoid unpredicted miss happening, change management to easily adopt new amendments in customer’s specifications etc (WESTLAND, Jason, 2007, pp.56 - 60). Projects sponsors and the key stake holders should be informed about the status of the project throughout this phase so that they make sure the project is running as per their wishes (BARRON, Merrie and Barron, Andrew, 2009). In the last stage of closure, the project is finally delivered to the client after their approval. This stage requires that the client must accept the deliverables. The project will be successful if it achieves all the objectives and business benefits described in business problem/case. The activities involved in this stage includes developing a project closure report which lists all of the closure activities, releasing all the deliverables to the client, handing over the documentation, terminating all the supplier contracts, releasing project resources and informing all the stakeholders about the project closure (WESTLAND, Jason, 2007, pp.196 - 200). After the completion of the project, the project is reviewed, usually by external independent parties, to know whether the project actually achieved the objectives and business benefits (Unviersity of Saskatchewan, 2010). Challenges and problems are common happening in any project. The following are some very common challenges and problems involved Project Management: Unclear scope and objectives lead the project to obscure path. Project Managers usually complain about lack of communication. This happens when sufficient communication flow is not passed from team members. This can be solved by making proper channels of communication flow. Geographically dispersed project team is a problem for the PM that hinders the process of communication flow. Computer technology may be used to overcome this problem such as Centralized Communication Platform. High risky project is a problem High risk projects are considers great trouble by the project managers. Project objectives not linked with organization’s objectives Lack of support from managerial staff. Due to ever changing nature of economies, the client often modifies the specifications of project, which is a matter of great distress for the Project Manager. Lack of Project Management skills among the team members. It can be solved by training and development. Not involving the project sponsors and important stakeholders. Projects are integral parts of organizations, be it a public or private. Project translates strategies into actions and objectives into realities (MANU, Kumar, 2007). The tasks of project managers, especially in today's competitive and fast changing environment, has become quite complicated. Now, Project managers need to come out of the traditional method and apply innovation in their project to meet their ultimate goals. Bibliography BARRON, Merrie and Andrew BARRON. 2009. Connections. [online]. [Accessed 17 March 2011]. Available from World Wide Web: HAYNES, Marion E. 2002. Project Management. Canada: Cengage Learning. HEALY, Patrick L. 1997. Project management. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. KNUTSON, Joan and Ira BITZ. 1991. Project management. Newyork: AMACOM Div American Management Association. LOCK, Dennis. 2007. Project management. England: Gower Publishing, Ltd. MANU, Kumar. 2007. The Importance of Project Management in Organizations. [online]. [Accessed 16 March 2011]. Available from World Wide Web: Method123. [online]. [Accessed 13 March 2011]. Available from World Wide Web: PORTNY, Stanley E. 2010. Project Management For Dummies. For Dummies. Unviersity of Saskatchewan. 2010. [online]. [Accessed 13 March 2011]. Available from World Wide Web: WESTLAND, Jason. 2007. The project management life cycle. Philadelphia: Kogan Page Publishers. Read More