Project Management Challenges - Research Proposal Example

Project Management Challenges Project Management is as old as mountains. The construction of Taj Mehal was indeed a project and its successful completion was truly a result of successful Project Management. Albert Lester, in his book Project Management, comprehensively defines Project Management as “The planning, monitoring and control of all aspects of project and the motivation of all those involved in it, in order to achieve the project objectives within agreed criteria of time, cost and performance.”[Les06]. His definition includes all the aspects of Project Management including the three main ultimate objectives of time, cost and performance and also touches the soft and hard skills required for accomplishing those ultimate targets. A Project Manager is person who is responsible for the successful completion of the project and manages all the stages of project life cycle. His ultimate aim is to deliver the project to the customer according to specification and choices of the customer without delay of time and without excessive cost incurrence. For a Project Managers to work effectively, collaboration with Functional manager is mandatory. Let’s understand who functional managers are and how they differ from project managers. Functional managers are those who are managing the core operations of the business and are appointed permanently, usually for longer period of time. On the other hand, Project Managers are appointed for particular task such as building a new branch, constructing a port etc. Project Managers are usually appointed for a particular period of time whose job is completed after the completion of the project. Any organization may choose from various combinations of power strategy that are assigned to the Functional Manager and the Project Manager. These types are Weak Matrix, Balanced Matrix, Strong Matrix and Projectized[Jos09]. Project Managers might be dependent on Functional managers for various things. For example, Project managers usually borrow staff from functional managers when they are short of the team members. Sometimes, the project manager is a functional manager too where he/she performs additional job of a project manager. For example, a restaurant business wants to expand its business in another city. The CEO might appoint the Operation Manager of main branch, the additional task of Project Manager for building the design, processes, menu, hiring employees etc of the new branch in this new city. Appointing your own Functional Manager as the Project Manager is helpful in various ways. The Project Manager, in such cases, knows the culture, system, processes, vision and mission of the company. It will also save cost as hiring a new project manager will cost hefty amount and your own functional manager might not need that much amount. It is necessary for functional management to effectively coordinate, communicate and work collaboratively with the project management team. The Project Managers might need a lot of information from the functional managers for various things. The authorities given to project managers are usually restricted, especially the cost and expenditure control, legislative decision making etc for the reason that Project Managers might not have sufficient experience of handling specific tasks. Thus, usually financial controls are not given to the PM. However, many Project Management specialists say that they should have control over costs and expenditure within a specified and agreed limit. This should be one reason why Functional Manager must collaborate closely with project manager and understand their compelling issues. The ultimate aim of a Project Manager is to make happy the project sponsors and all stakeholders included through efficient completion of the project without consuming excessive amount of money and time. Therefore, Project Managers are required to apply management techniques and systems from the beginning of the project to completion, and these factors are quite helpful in achieving the ultimate objectives of a project which are quality, time, scope and cost[Den07]. The Project Management must also need to master in soft and hard skills. The hard skills are required for managing projects. These are the technical skills which are required to get the job done. On the other side, soft skills are known as general management skills which are required for any kind of business operation where it does not matter whether it is a factory, retail outlet, design office, public service organization or local government. Soft Skills basically relates to the attitudes and behaviors. The soft skills are useful in managing yourself, your relationship with other people and leading your team effectively. Hard skill deals with subject such as cost control, change management, project life cycle, network analysis, earned value analysis, risk management, quality management, estimation, procurement and tender analysis[Les06]. The hard skills requires break down of the project into various activities and phases and; proper time allotted to each of them. Among the hard skills, the project manager requires to set the goals on the basis of allotted times. The project manager should determine what skills and machineries will be required to do various task of the project. For example, for constructing a port, dredging is required which requires dredger and a driver for it. The PM is required to forecast a proper budget. He/She is required to develop and implement systems and process designs for Risk and Issues Management, Change Control, Product Assurance which should be least time and cost consuming. Hard Skills, as most of the Project Management guru say, is only 20% of the total success. The big 80% goes to Soft Skills[Ric09]. For a project manager, the softer skills are his/her ability to effectively lead the team members, ability to build and sustain effective teams, proper and effective communication with the team members, the ability to resolve conflicts and; developing and maintain passion, enthusiasm and energy within the team members. The soft skills require the Project Manager to be enthusiastic and energetic about the work he is doing and passing the same to the team members. The main factors in soft skills are the communication and inter-personal skills. A PM should be a great communicator and should be able to communicate its thoughts and ideas with the team members and listen to them. He/She must know the art of negotiation and how to go for a win-win solution in negations. They must be honest and approachable. Project managers should carry with them their hard and soft skills throughout the phases of Project Life Cycle. Every project goes through certain phases of development, known as Project Management Life Cycle. It has four phases: Initiation, Planning, Execution and Closure. In the Initiation stage, the scope and approach of the project are defined. In this stage, a Project Manager is appointed, who selects various team members keeping in view the required skills and experiences. Feasibility study is conducted and project charter is developed which helps in defining goal, vision, end result of the project and also mentions the stake holders among other things[Met11]. After that, Project Office is set with suitable location and necessary equipments required among other things. In planning stage, sets of plan are created to guide the team members from the starting of the project till its end. There are several types of plan that have to be created which includes Project Plan, Resource Plan, Financial Plan, Risk Plan, Acceptance Plan, Communications Plan, Procurement Plan etc[Met11]. In Execution and Implementation phase, project activities are properly executed and controlled[Pro08]. It is the longest phase of project lifecycle where the project manager needs to monitor and control the project by implementing a various management processes which will help in managing procurement, customer acceptance and communications. In this phase, a project manager should perform time, cost, quality, change, risk, issue and acceptance management. In Closure phase, the project is formally closed whereas the overall success is reported to the sponsor. It includes, as written by Method123’s website, “handing over the deliverables to your customer, passing the documentation to the business, cancelling supplier contracts, releasing staff and equipment, and informing stakeholders of the closure of the project.”[Met11]. Post Implementation Review is conducted after the closure of project which examines the successfulness of the project. A project manager needs to define which constraints must be given importance on the Project Management Triangle which consists of three constraints i.e. performance, time and cost. Achieving these three main objectives of time, performance and cost are summarized as delighting the customer while creating a commercial success for the contractor[Den07]. It is worth mentioning here that PMI has eliminated away the project triangle in its latest version of PMBOK by saying that a project has much more constraints to be observed than scope, time and cost[PMH09]. Project managers use their soft and hard skills to meet the requirement of the stake holders involved in it. The stake holders for a project are the customer for which the project is being conducted and the contractor who is conducting the Project Management task. It also includes all those people and organization that are indirectly affected by the success or failure of the project. For example, if a bank has financed for a project, then that bank will indeed be affected by the success or failure of the project. Also subcontractors and suppliers are indirectly affected by the outcome of projects. Project Managers may face various kinds of problems and challenges during the time span of project. Copping effectively with these challenges will move the project toward success and vice versa. Geographically dispersed project teams are one of the most acclaimed challenges faced by project managers. Since projects require collaborative efforts to be completed, geographically dispersed project team is a big challenge. However, this problem may be overcome by centralized project management solution. It may be in shape of a blog, or an interactive website. Yahoo groups, Facebook groups, Google Wave etc may be used for accomplishing this purpose. Unrealistic deadline is another problem which is quite common. Deadlines should be given keeping in view the external and risk factors. The activities may stop due to several reasons especially when the environment is risky. If the Project Manager gets a tight deadline, he/she should first negotiate with customer and should also highlight the possible drawbacks of hurrying up. Tight deadline may be met by creative planning and alternatives analysis. Communication deficit is another intense problem. It happens in shape of team members or project manager not providing sufficient amount of data to people. This problem mostly occurs due to lack of an infrastructure or culture for good communication. [PWF04] This problem can be solved by determining a proper flow of communication and telling all the members that what information they have to give to whom. Failure to manage risk causes great trouble and hindrance. Therefore, risk should be assessed and actions must be taken to reduce its chances of happening. Problem also occurs when the goals and objectives of the project are not defined. This will lead the team to an obscure path. Efficient project manager with good hard skills can easily determine the scope of the project using various models and using their soft skills can effectively convey the same to the team member. Problem also occurs when the customer and the end-user is not included during the project. The final result should indeed be in accordance with the customer’s specifications and choice. However, sometime the project team gets deeply involved in own world of internal deliverables, deadlines, and process and usually avoid the most important stakeholder[PWF04]. Cost estimation is one of an extremely important hard skill that must be possessed by a Project Manager. By using it, the proper budget is developed at the start of the project which should not exceed in later stages of the project. Similarly, timescale must be created by PM for each activity and phase of the project, using forecasting skills. Project Management is an extremely important field which immensely underpins economic activities. Almost all the industries are driven by project and the public sector is always trying to meet the ever growing demands of people through projects such as roads, schools and hospital etc. Its importance can be known by the fact that US spends more than $2.3 trillion on projects every year (Bureau of Economic Analysis, US Dept of Commerce). Innovation is an important element of Project Management. ) Project managers can implement innovative ideas and indeed can get successful outcome with less time and less resources usage, while delivering excellent performance to their clients. References: Les06: , (LESTER, Albert, 2006), Jos09: , (JOSH, 2009), Den07: , (LOCK, Dennis, 2007), Ric09: , (MORREALE, Richard, 2009), Met11: , (Method123), Pro08: , (Visitask, 2008), PMH09: , (HUT, PM, 2009), PWF04: , (FORD, P. W., 2004), PWF04: , (FORD, P. W., 2004), Read More