IT Projects as Organizational Driving Force - Assignment Example

How do projects become the driving force in organizational priorities Give an example of when it is appropriate for a project to be an organizational driving force, and an example of when it is inappropriate. Operations commonly make up usual activity of the organization. But organization needs a project to get on the next level of its development. Project is a long-time process and its result helps company to achieve some goal it would never achieve without the project. For example, successful fulfillment of Windows 3.1 project in Microsoft Corp. allowed it to come into the market of software for personal computers and in a great extent to create this market. So project of creating Windows became the driving force for Microsoft Corp. The most efficient structure is when activity of the organization consists of project, and every project consists of operations; in this case some projects may be endless. Project managers define human, technical, financial and other resources they need for their projects; then all these needs are summarized and put to the organizational plan and budget. So needs of the projects determine organizational needs and priorities. Also it often happens that very important goals of organization (i.e. new market penetration, getting a state construction contract, getting a software development tender) depend on projects. Sometimes a successful project can save a company from a bankruptcy or irretrievably crush competitors. Project may not be an organizational driving force when it contradicts the organizational goals or is badly planned and doomed to failure. In this case the project draws human, time, technical, financial and other resources from the organization and gives nothing instead. For example, IBM spent a lot of time and effort on development of operating system OS/2, but the project was not successful. IBM is the greatest hardware vendor, but it failed with operating system development. (2) Human and political factors loom large in the success of projects. How might you deal with the situation of the deposed popular PM The human factor is important because management entails getting things done through the actions of people. An effective manager must understand the importance of human factors such as needs, drives, motivation, leadership, personality, behavior, and work groups. The project manager must be able to exert interpersonal influence in order to lead the project team. By Hendrickson, the project manager often gains the support of his/her team through a combination of the following: Formal authority resulting from an official capacity which is empowered to issue orders. Reward and/or penalty power resulting from his/her capacity to dispense directly or indirectly valued organization rewards or penalties. Expert power when the project manager is perceived as possessing special knowledge or expertise for the job. Attractive power because the project manager has a personality or other characteristics to convince others. (Hendrickson, 1998, chap.2) So I will use these issues in my relations with the team. The members of the project team must work together, whether they are assembled from different divisions of the same organization or even from different organizations. Some problems of interaction may arise initially when the team members are unfamiliar with their own roles in the project team, particularly for a large and complex project. These problems must be resolved quickly in order to develop an effective, functioning team. Also I need to explore two important subjects: why the previous project manager was so popular and why the project is about to fail in spite of the great love of the team to him. Maybe his management style was too soft and democratic and work conditions were too hothouse. If so, I would say to the team, "Guys, it was very good, but now it's finished. Let's work together, and let's work hard, because it's the only way for our company to survive. I don't need your love, I need the work done." Also it may be good decision to rebuild the team in order to make it more efficient. Maybe some key persons of the team are not very interested in the project. They might come to an agreement with the competitor and commit sabotage in the project. The only way to determine such persons is to examine results of work of every key person in detail, thus I need to replace all persons whose results were unsatisfactory. (3) What is the role of the systems approach in your project In general, what are some advantages and disadvantages of the systems approach in this project and project management in general There is a number of definitions of the notion "system": system is a set of variables selected by an observer. system is anything that has parts. system is a structure of subsystems, every system being embedded in a larger system. There is no some predefined set of variables for every specific project, because every project manager defines it on his or her own. But it is possible to pick out following variables in the project of creating the biochip: people, pieces of equipment, financial and time resources, technologies used, prototypes of the biochip, etc. All this variables can be evaluated, so the project also can be evaluated; so it's possible to say, "The project of creating the biochip takes $500,000 and 6 man-month, it needs 10 machines for the assembly shop". Moreover, project as a process can be broken by parts: analysis, planning, design, development, bug fixing, every part in its turn can be broken in activities. It gives potential for the scheduling of the project for estimating time, allocating resources, building teamwork and developing consensus. Also schedules are tools for tracking time and resource utilization. Establishing realistic schedules and budgets for projects that support business objectives and meet client expectations is one of the most challenging aspects of project planning. Delivering on those results within the agreed time, cost and quality constraints is a critical success factor for the project. For the project management in general there is a need to analyze the total problem; individual components design and management without interaction with other components may not lead to an efficient system. By integrating the management and technical problems the project manager can provide better solutions to achieve the project goal. System approach helps the project manager analyze the interfaces between project elements and integrate system components. It allows the project manager to implement concurrent engineering in the project, which can save time and money. And the systems approach provides a framework for the trade off analyses, i.e., trading off performance, cost, and schedule. The only disadvantage of the system approach I can imagine can occur when the system is defined wrongly, and its parts and variables do not match the actual state of affairs. Wrong system analysis creates a lot of difficulties for running a project and makes the project out of control. (4) What is a Pareto-optimal solution Is it a win-win or win-lose solution How might your problem with personnel availability be solved Pareto-optimally As a term from the Game Theory, Pareto optimality is a measure of efficiency. An outcome of a game is Pareto optimal if there is no other outcome that makes every player at least as well off and at least one player strictly better off. That is, a Pareto optimal outcome cannot be improved upon without hurting at least one player. By Wikipedia, Pareto efficiency, or Pareto optimality, is a central concept in economics with broad applications in game theory, engineering and the social sciences. Given a set of alternative allocations and a set of individuals, a movement from one alternative allocation to another that can make at least one individual better off, without making any other individual worse off is called a Pareto improvement. An allocation of resources is Pareto efficient or Pareto optimal when no further Pareto improvements can be made. The term is named after Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist who used the concept in his studies of economic efficiency and income distribution. If an economic system is not Pareto efficient, then it is the case that some individual can be made better off without anyone being made worse off. It is commonly accepted that such inefficient outcomes are to be avoided, and therefore Pareto efficiency is an important criterion for evaluating economic systems and political policies. In particular, it can be shown that, under certain idealized conditions, a system of free markets will lead to a Pareto efficient outcome. This was first demonstrated mathematically by economists Kenneth Arrow and Gerard Debreu, although the result may not necessarily reflect the workings of real economies because of the restrictive assumptions necessary for the proof (markets exist for all possible goods, markets are perfectly competitive, and transaction costs are negligible). This is called the first welfare theorem. Not every Pareto efficient outcome will be regarded as desirable. For example, consider a dictatorship run solely for the benefit of one person. This will, in general, be Pareto optimal because it will be impossible to raise the well-being of anyone (excluding the dictator) without reducing the well-being of the dictator, and vice versa. Nevertheless, most people (except by definition the dictator) would not see this as a desirable economic system. A strongly Pareto optimal (SPO) allocation is one such that is strictly preferred by one person, and no other allocation would be as good for everyone. A weakly Pareto optimal (WPO) allocation is one where a feasible reallocation would be strictly preferred by all agents. From the point of view of the game theory, Pareto-optimal solution is a win-win solution concerning environment, because every player has the best possible position in the environment. But Pareto-optimal solution is much more a win-lose solution inside the environment, because it assumes that one player has strictly better position than the others. The problem with personnel availability can be solved Pareto-optimally with help of resource planning: I will ask the key persons to plan their time to take part in my project and in the others. (5) Given your budget problem, you realize that the budget planning process is like a game. In what ways is it a game Discuss how to keep the budget planning process from becoming a game for your future projects. Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics that uses models to study interactions with formalized incentive structures ("games"). There are two or more players in a game and they have the opposite goals; usually they are struggling for some limited resource. A game in strategic form combines the set of possible strategies for each player and records the payoffs for each outcome. The budget planning process is the process for allocating organizational resources to project activities. Budget is forecasting required resources, quantities needed, when needed and costs; also it helps tie project to overall organizational activities. The budget planning is a game, because there are a number of players in it (CEO, stakeholders, project managers and employees) and they have the opposite goals. Stakeholders want to optimize profit and to reduce costs, employees aim at receiving better salaries and doing less work. But finances are a limited resource, the bigger are the employees' salaries, the less is stakeholders' profit. It's impossible to keep the budget planning process from becoming a game from the point of view of the game theory, but it's possible to try to keep the budget planning process from becoming a game from the common sense. For this I should take into account unforeseeable consequences, such as degrees of uncertainty in planning, delayed approvals, significant cost variances - positive and negative, expanded project scope and unanticipated costs. Also the human factor is the least predictable factor in the project, so I should run the project so that the negative impact of the human factor is minimized. Bibliography: 1. Bremser W.G. (2005). How to Plan and Manage Your Company Budget, Fifth Edition. American Management Association. Retrieved July 1, 2005, from http://www.flexstudy.com/catalog/index.cfmlocation=sch&coursenum=95075 2. Finkelstein, R. (n.d.). An Overview Of Project Management 3. Finkelstein, R. (n.d.). Pareto Optimality 4. Greer M. (1999). Key Principles for PM Success. Excerpt from "Chapter 6: Planning and Managing Human Performance Technology Projects," Handbook of Human Performance Technology, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 1999 5. Hendrickson C. (1998). Project Management for Construction. Fundamental Concepts for Owners, Engineers, Architects and Builders. Retrieved July 1, 2005, from http://www.ce.cmu.edu/pmbook/index.html 6. Pareto efficiency (n.d.). Wikipedia. Retrieved July 1, 2005, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_optimality 7. Shafer S.M. (2005). Project Management in Practice, Second Edition. Wiley J. and Sons, Inc., Wake Forest University Read More