How a Project Manager May Resolve Challenges Involved in the Initial Stages of the Project - Coursework Example

Challenges of a Project Manager Introduction World Health Organization (WHO) in southern India runs a vaccination campaign, whose target is to vaccinate 4.2 million children in three days. NASA has been constantly sending astronauts, satellites, robots and others in the outer world to understand the behavior and patterns of the solar system. Indian Railways is currently in a process of adding some 10 more local trains in their system but only those ones, which are faster, better, and more durable. Lexus has focused its attention towards designing more sophisticated hybrid, fuel efficient and environmental friendly cars. All of these four above cases are examples of project management. Without any doubts, in today’s ruthless, competitive, and fast-paced corporate world, project management is surrounding us from all possible directions. In fact, the concept of managing projects, plans, ventures, and events has been there on the scene since centuries. The Hanging Garden of Babylon, the Pyramids of Egypt, the Taj Mahal of Agra, the Great Wall of China, and others are all examples of great project management since these projects are examples of efficient work by the managers of that time, considering all their constraints (Heerkens, pp. 20-28, 2007). However, for the past few decades project management has strongly evolved as a prominent subject and has acquired its place as literature in philosophy. Experts differ in the definition as they have diverse opinions on many subjects. Yet after combining those definitions, it would not be wrong to say, “Project management is the application of skills, techniques, and tools to enable activities to attain project requirements. Project management is achieved through integration and application of project management practices of initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling and closing” (Portny, Portny, Mantel Jr., Meredith, Kramer, & Sutton, pp. 9-45, 2007). Considering this description in mind, as said earlier, projects, project managers, and projects management is everywhere, surrounding us from all possible directions. Every software engineer, mechanical engineer, Research and Development Manager, financial expert, planning manager or other, who is in middle of coming up with a new product is also facing the elements of project management in some way or the other. Gone are the days when jobs were simple, straightforward, and repetitive. The competition is just getting tougher and tougher by every day and organizations are hungry for new ways to assure their survival. History speaks that change and innovation has been the key to survival and even leadership (Baker, Baker, & Campbell, pp. 1-5, 2003). Thus, organizations and firms now want innovation, change, and creativity at every step and in very element, product or service they provide. Obviously, higher innovation levels mean higher efforts, higher level of resource consumption, tighter schedules, increased pressures, need of excellent quality, and others. This is what has lead to the advent of project management. The pressure of innovation and change has reached to such extreme levels that experts felt the need to create project management, as a different art and science so that a factory comes on to the scene, were individuals learn that how to absorb these pressures and still produce effective and efficient results. Moreover, it is also important tot understand that project management as separate management field is very young and it has not been more 3 decades since it has come on the scene (Frigenti & Comninos, pp. 3-7, 2002). Discussion After a comprehensive overview of the subject, the paper would now move forwards towards the basic goal, aim, and focus of this paper. Experts divide project management into distinct phases of concept, definition, planning, execution, and closeout. The aim of this paper is to discuss the problems and issues faced by project managers during the initial phases of project management. Moreover, the paper would also present solutions to those problems. It would be very interesting to know that only around 20 percent of the projects hit the bull’s eye and enter into successful completion phases (Meredith & Mantel, pp. 36-37, 2005). The rest of them die either in their infancy or during the execution phase, which indicates that there are significant problems that need reevaluation. More importantly, majority of these problems actually belong to the initial phases of the project. A project is most likely to fail in its initial phases if you have the basics wrong. It is vital to understand that when basic economics says that resources are scare and there is always an opportunity cost associated with every decision, they are not lying. The same applies to project management as well. At times, project managers think that they can get all the fishes from an ocean by just one net, which is just not possible. According to the basics, if a product is a mix of element “A” and “B”, then it is important to note that for having a greater share of product “A” one would have to forgo some portion of product “B” (Meredith & Mantel, pp. 36-37, 2005). The same applies to the constraints of project management as well. Experts have identified time, cost, and performance as the major constraints or elements of any project. However, recently, few authors have also added a fourth constraint of “scope” into this picture, which is also somehow important to consider (Verzuh, pp. 17-56, 2005). The lesson here for a project manager is that he or she cannot ensure extreme levels of all these three or four elements at the same time. Let us take the example of pyramids of Egypt as a project. Without any doubts, the performance of the workers was outstanding; it did not cost that much as well moreover the scope was also satisfactory. However, it lacked at the element of time because it took those workers many years to make those pyramids. In fact, even in the outside world you cannot buy a product, whose performance is outstanding, the cost is exceptionally low, time required is negligible and the scope of functions is great (Lock, pp. 14-19, 2007). Even if somebody tells you the same then it would be difficult to believe on it until and unless you find out the catch in it. Therefore, many projects fail because of unrealistic assumptions of the project managers regarding time, cost, performance and scope of the project. They actually need to sit down and understand the fact that they would have to bargain on these factors of their project and forgo some for a larger share of the other. Another problem occurs when these managers actually fail to identify that what they exactly what. At times, due to extreme pressures of management they end up lowering their costs to such an extent that they find themselves left with extreme low performance levels and more time required and or may be reducing the scope of the project to undesirable extent. Every now and then, we hear that an XYZ project was not able to complete on time and manager has asked for extension the deadline for two weeks but the management can only give a week. Therefore, the manager now has to work with double speed, as to complete the job of two weeks in one week thus reducing its effectiveness and quality of the project as well. Now, all this happens because of the same reason mentioned a few lines above and that is unrealistic assumptions and trade amongst the constraints of time, performance, cost and scope (Lock, pp. 14-19, 2007). The solution to the above-mentioned problems appears to be quite forwards and actually is quite simple. It all about two things: proper homework and communication. Firstly, it depends upon the homework of the project manager and his readiness to understand the relation between these constraints. It is the project managers’ job to evaluate the relation between these constraints for the specific project and find out that how much he would have to forgo of “time” to get higher performance, less costs or may be higher scope or vice versa (Cleland, & Ireland, pp. 65-74, 2006). It is important here to note that all project managers know these constraints; it is just that when they plan they end up making unrealistic assumptions. Now, it is important to explore the reason of these unrealistic assumptions. This leads to us to the second part of the solution and that is about communication (Kerzner, pp. 10-18, 2009). Managers often are reluctant in telling about there constraints, issues, problems and shortcomings to the top management because they think that the management would not understand that these things are natural and put all the blame on them. Moreover, at many occasions it is the management who actually demands more than possible and forces the project to base on unrealistic and impossible assumptions. Therefore, the project managers should ensure that they communicate and express their thoughts, recommendations, constraints, limits, and suggestions for the project and they should take a clear stand because accepting unrealistic projects would only damage their reputation (Portny, Portny, Mantel Jr., Meredith, Kramer, & Sutton, pp. 9-45, 2007). It is also very common to hear project team members complaining that the project is too narrow or too board or may be the project requirements are asking them to put in loner work hours. The solutions are quite understandable and again ask the managers to do proper homework. Experts believe that the concept, planning, and definition phase should take longer than it should for the usual projects (Lewis, pp. 23-24, 2006). This is because many projects just rush through these phases like anything because they are in such a hurry to execute the plan. This results in lacking in the project objectives, as said either that it ends up being too narrow or too board. The worst-case scenario being that the team members are not well aware of the project requirements. In addition, it also happens so often that you would see a project team member in stressful situation complaining about the requirements of the project and telling that his or her life has changed since this project. Many projects do fail due to the same reason that by asking members putting in longer work hours is may be good to a certain extent but after that, it only brings dissatisfaction, decreased productivity and higher turnover and nothing else (Baker, Baker & Campbell, pp. 46-49, 2003). The solutions are to make sure that your team members know the project objectives clearly. Define them, discuss them, promote them, value them, repeat them, make them visible, and spend some serious time and energy for defining them. Moreover, they process of creating and coming up those objectives should include the team members as well. Projects also fail because at time project mangers and members spend too much time in coming up with the idea and designing the plan that they just do not have the time to actually test the idea or plan. The risk is high and most of the projects, which do the same, end up failing and closing during the early phases of their execution (Portny, Portny, Mantel Jr., Meredith, Kramer, & Sutton, pp. 9-45, 2007). Therefore, it is important to spend enough time on testing of the ideas as well. Projects in their very beginning also specify responsibilities for each individual and at time, they identify their high performers or individuals for whom the managers expect the most. These individuals are those ones who alone can, if required, complete the project. In addition, they provide guidance and sense of direction to their team and the team relies on them big time. What if that individual leaves the team due to any reasons? That affects the project very badly and at times, it leads to failure as well. Therefore, defining the second line of all members of the group is very important. Therefore, that even if someone leaves at any point in time then the manager should have an alternative or replacement to that member (Lewis, pp. 23-24, 2006). Conclusively, the paper has discussed some of the significant aspects of a project manager. The paper has identified and analyzed different studies related to the topic; however, it is anticipation that future researches in this regard will allow a more comprehensive and updated understanding of the impact. It is an expectation that the paper will be beneficial for students, teachers, and professionals in better understanding of the topic. References Baker, Sunny, Baker, Kim, & Campbell, G. Michael. (2003). Complete idiot's guide to project management. Alpha Books. Cleland, David I., & Ireland, Lewis R. (2006). Project management: strategic design and implementation. McGraw-Hill Professional. Frigenti, Enzo, & Comninos, Dennis. (2002). the practice of project management: a guide to the business-focused approach. Kogan Page Publishers. Heerkens, Gary R. (2007). Project Management: 24 Steps to Help You Master Any Project. McGraw-Hill Professional. Kerzner, Harold. (2009). Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling. John Wiley and Sons. Lewis, James P. (2006). Fundamentals of Project Management. AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn. Lock, Dennis. (2007). Project management. Gower Publishing, Ltd. Meredith, Jack R., & Mantel, Samuel J. (2005). Project management: a managerial approach. John Wiley. Portny, Stanley E., Portny, Samuel E., Mantel Jr., Samuel J., Meredith, Jack R., Shafer, Scott M., Kramer, Brian E., & Sutton, Margaret M. (2007). Project management. Wiley. Verzuh, Eric. (2005). the fast forward MBA in project management. John Wiley and Sons. Read More