Project Management: How to Effectively Manage a Project - Essay Example

? HUMAN CLOUD SYSTEMS First School Affiliation Executive Summary This paper is interested in coming up with a reliable report free from biasness from critics who have criticized the United Kingdom Government’s new welfare system project to show the areas that need to be looked at that have caused the criticism that have caused the project to be deemed to be wrongfully managed. This report will offer recommendation of the ways that we can bring up good management of the project. Introduction The United Kingdom government has brought in a new system that was labelled ‘The Universal Credit project’. This is a welfare project that that has been introduced in 2013 aimed to target the individuals who are looking for work and those under jobs that have low income. The universal credit has brought together a variety of working-age benefits and put them into a single payment. The Universal credit project was aimed at encouraging the individuals on benefits to initiate paid work or to have overtime hours to work by ensuring that the job is paying. The Universal credit project also helped bring in a smoothened transition when getting into work and at the time of retiring. The Universal Credit system has also brought about a simplification in its operation with respect to the previous system in that it has become easy for people to comprehend its working and it is simpler and less expensive to dispense (Department for Work & Pensions 2013b). The welfare system also aimed to significantly reduce the number of individuals who are under poverty and they are still working. It also aimed to reduce chances of errors and fraud that have been witnessed in the current system. This project had good intentions and it was seen as the best and efficient way at the time to deal with the welfare situation and diminish poverty. This project on being run has come across several setbacks that have seen it receive criticism from various corners. The media especially depicted negative publicity of the Universal Credit project citing poor management and lack of transparency within the system. Management of the Universal Credit project has witnessed various changes within the management running the system severally. This report hopes to review how to effectively manage a project and with the reference of the Universal Credit project I will cite ways in which such a project would effectively have been managed in a bid to eliminate the problems in management that the project faced when it was set to run. Background Many individuals on benefits are of the thought that the financial threats of moving into work are extremely high. Some people have actually viewed the gains from the work they do, especially working during part time, to be very little and such gains are easily neutralized by other expenses that increase day in day out such as the fee involved in transportation. The government of United Kingdom considered and viewed the current program to be too complicated and it lacks rewards and incentives that will encourage and boost the morale of individuals on benefits to initiate paid work or to have overtime hours to work. The government hence set out to come up with a system that would do this and that was fairer and was cheap to afford in a bid to diminish joblessness, welfare dependency and poverty and to decrease the degree of error and fraud (Department for Work & Pensions 2013b). The United Kingdom government hence came up with a welfare system that would do all this and it was what we now know as the Universal credit. The welfare program was aimed at ensuring that a large number of people get into jobs and those in jobs to successively progress in them. Project initiation This is the most crucial stage of any project. It is the first process in the project development lifecycle. Project initiation is the major determiner of whether the project will turn out to be a success and hence keenness and efficiency should be observed in this process. Most projects that fail during deployment have been attributed to fail due to the lack of proper methodology of the tasks supposedly carried out in project initiation. The process consists of six steps (Anon. 2013a) that when effectively followed, they lead to proper project take off with a minimum rate of failure. A basic summarization of the steps of project initiation would be the setting up of a competent team and approving the startup of the project. The first phase is always to identify the problem that has led to the coming up of the project. This can be done through case study of various scenarios. In the Universal credit project, this phase was properly carried out and thus the problem identified was that there was existence of poverty in people who are actually working. This project was based on this problem. The next step after identifying the problem was that of performing a feasibility study on the identified problem. This relies on the independent research performed by the interested party, those starting the project, to determine if the project would be feasible when it launches. The United Kingdom government had evaluated the projected gain of tackling the problem as I have shown in the introductory part of this report. The next involves coming up with objectives and guidelines that would help propel the project forward. The objectives were well set in the new welfare system project, the main one being to curb poverty among those who are working or should be working and to ensure there is maximum benefits of working and even doing overtime work. The fourth step requires a lot of keenness in its execution. This is the phase where a team to spearhead the project is picked (Anon. 2013b). The success of this phase will determine the speed at which the set project picks up pace. This is the stage where the first failure in the United Kingdom government in the setting up of the Universal credit project. This has led to the setbacks that have been observed after the launch of the project. There have been numerous changes in the management of the project and this has been cited to be due to poor management brought about by bureaucracy in the system (Proudfoot 2013). If this step was thoroughly carried out, then the problem of poor management would not have been an issue in this stage. The fifth step is the identification of the intended location and the target group that the project is set to impact. The Universal credit project was certainly set out to be implemented in the United Kingdom and those with the ability to work were to be the main beneficiaries. This was set right according to my understanding. The sixth phase involves project review. This is where schedule and budget come in. Is the project going to follow the schedule set? Is the budget allocated sufficient? This step in the project under review seemed to have flaws. According to Ballard (2013) and Hinks (2013) the project was an expensive one that had cost the tax payer quite some money. The IT platform used to implement the project is very expensive (BBC 2013). This would not be a problem if this step was keenly conducted. Stakeholder management Stakeholder management facilitates an organization's ideal goals by interpreting and impacting both the internal and external surroundings and by developing positive connections with stakeholders through the proper management of their objectives and decided goals. Underlying principles are responsible for guiding and planning the process and control of Stakeholder management. The stakeholders should be able to have a say in what is taking place in the execution of a project and they should be keen to ensure there is transparency. In the Universal project, there was failure in this management that has led to negative happenings in the project. First, there was a lot of independence in the operations of the project, with minimal monitoring from the relevant stakeholders in the government. A project set up with a large budget should have had close monitoring that would provide for transparency in all operations. Secondly, there lacked an oversight that would keep track of the detailed plan of the project (National Audit Office 2013). This lack of connections among the stakeholders has led to lack of transparency in the day to day activities of the project. Conclusion The project seems to have been piloted towards the setbacks it faced from start, during project initiation. This is evident in that there has been poor management in the project severally and this has read to continuous changes being made on the project leader. The next factor that is still in the project initiation is the lack of a satisfactory budget that would help launch the project. Lack of proper oversight in the project has proved to form a detrimental error to the project. This has been seen to have caused lack of transparency between the internal stakeholders and the external stakeholders in the project. This lack of transparency meant that there was little information given on the progressive nature of the project. Recommendation The project is already underway and hence no recommendation done based on the project initiation phase can be altered. But in future, the United Kingdom government should consider following all the steps involved during project initiation shown in earlier. They should choose the project tem wisely and leave no room for those who would lead projects to failure. My next recommendation is that there should be efficient interrelation among all the stakeholders so as to bring about a transparent system with well evaluated performance. This will help determine whether the project team is working towards the set goals and objectives. References Ballard, M. 2013. Agile chaos consumes Universal Credit. Public Sector IT. Available at: Accessed 8 November 2013. BBC. 2013. PM backs Iain Duncan Smith over universal credit 'failures'. Available at: < http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24839358> Accessed 8 November 2013. Department for Work & Pensions. 2013a. Government policy on Universal Credit: an introduction. Simplifying the welfare system and making sure work pays. Available at: Accessed 8 November 2013. Department for Work & Pensions. 2013b. Simplifying the welfare system and making sure work pays. Employment and Welfare. Available at: Accessed 8 November 2013. Hinks, J. 2013. UK government overspends on IT welfare payments system. Available at: Accessed 8 November 2013. National Audit Office. 2013. Universal Credit: early progress. Employment, jobs and careers. Available at: Accessed 8 November 2013. Project Initiation Phase. Anon. 2013a. Empowering mangers to succeed. Available at: Accessed 8 November 2013. Project Job Description. Anon., 2013b. Empowering mangers to succeed. Available at: Accessed 8 November 2013. Proudfoot, D. 2013. Universal Credit suffered from 'poor project management. Association of project management. Available at: Accessed 8 November 2013. Read More