Learned Lessons from Completing the Project on Royal Tires & More Systems Upgrade - Assignment Example

IntroductionThis present paper mainly seeks to spell out the lessons that were learnt while completing the project on Royal Tires & More systems upgrade. As a revisit to the project; Royal Tires & More, which is automotive repair company, were upgrading their business processes that were are characterised by an old cash register and an outdated accounting system to integrate the use of modern technology to perform key business functions. Therefore, the paper, which is prepared from the standpoint of a project manager, will identify some of the vital lessons that were learnt while upgrading the system of Royal Tires & More, and further state how the lessons learnt can be applied to future projects.

Lessons learnt while completing the projectWhile completing the project it was evident that it involved change and therefore, it meant that the project manger was equally tasked with change management of which according to the writings by Marshak (2005), the project managers or managers’ in-charge of a change programme are also required to manage people as part of their roles. Being that the project manager did not have any background knowledge on human resource management there were few cases whereby some employees of the company showed resistance to the implementation of the project because of fear of job loss due to the system upgrade that seemingly made some of them redundant.

Part of the lesson that the project manager learnt from the resistance that was attributed to change, was that he should adopt humanistic approach in projects that involve change. The humanistic approach according to Kotter (2011) is built on the premise that there has to be interpersonal relationship between managers and employees, and therefore managers have to consider the opinions or views of every party affected by the change. Secondly, while completing the project another key lesson that was learnt is that the project budget is highly prone to changes that are beyond the control of the project manager.

These changes are attributed to economic factors that are external and they may cause an influx of the budget beyond the original estimates or they may cause a reduction on the original estimates of the project budget. Application of the lessons learnt to future projects The first lesson that was learnt while completing the project was that projects that involves change, should be integrate change or people management to eradicate cases of resistance from employees. Therefore, in future projects, the project manager should apply proper change management to make each stakeholder participate in the project to make the implementation process to become successful with few or no hurdles.

The second lesson that was learnt while completing the project is that the project budget is usually prone to external factors that can make it unreal in the future. Therefore, in future projects, the project manager should always give a margin of error to the budget. For example, if the current budget estimates are $1 million then the project manager should give a margin of error of 20% meaning that the budget can either reduce by 20% or increase by 20% and therefore, the client should equally set aside an additional $200,000 incase economic factors such as price increase make the budget figure to shot upwards.

ReferencesKotter, J. (2011). "Change Management vs. Change Leadership -- What's the Difference?". Retrieved from: http.www. Forbes.com. Accessed [20.12.2012]Marshak, J. (2005). Contemporary challenges to the philosophy and practice of organizational development. Reinventing organizational development: New approaches to change in organizations. San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.