Is Project Management a Sub Topic or Sub Discipline of Management - Assignment Example

Project Management 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 the 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 efficiently by the managers of that time within all their constraints. It is just that, for the past few decades’ project management has strongly evolved as a prominent subject and has acquired its place as literature in philosophy. At this stage, there is a heated debate that is project management a sub topic or sub discipline of management or not and if yes than why giving it the status of unique a discipline? The answer would become quite straightforward to extract as this paper moves further. However, it would not be the best option not to answer the question of defining project management. Experts (Verzuh, pp. 17-56, 2005) 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 some 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). Therefore, 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. Myths related to Project Management- Clarifying Project management From the time that project management acquired its name as a unique field of study to this present date, the time span has not been significant enough for its wide spread recognition and conception. Despite the fact that experts are of the opinion that this is in the second decade of this 21st century, that project management would reach the stage of maturity. Yet there are many misconceptions and myths surrounding project management (Heerkens, pp. 15-41, 2007). This paper focuses and discusses these myths for three primary reasons. Firstly, it would help to enhance the concept of project management. Secondly, these myths would help to draw a clear line of distinction between project management and other management disciplines (Verzuh, pp. 17-56, 2005). Lastly, it would help to remove all the misconceptions regarding the subject and provide a formula or frame work of any project’s success or failure, which is clearly a goal for this paper. It is vital here to quickly clear off the first misconception regarding project management. People view project managers as individuals who are responsible for planning the project not only for themselves but also for the whole team. However, this is not the case. Project managers are responsible to facilitate the planning process. How can an individual make correct judgments regarding all the resources, time constraints, do and don’ts, and how an indivudal can decide the whole course of action for others. Then it would be injustice to hold the whole team responsible if something goes wrong. In short, the job of a project manager is to “lead” his or her team. Leadership is all about influence and getting things done from people. The same is the job of a project manager (Heerkens, pp. 15-41, 2007). There is a lot of buzz in the market that project management is all about scheduling and using the Microsoft project software. Many firms have used this software but the percentage of failures remains high (Baker, Baker, & Campbell, pp. 1-5, 2003). This is because project management is not juts scheduling. As mentioned in the definition it is more than that. If the rest of the elements except for scheduling are not taken into consideration then the only thing that a precise scheduling would provide an project manager with, would be the ability to present his or her failures in formal documented style. At times, there are tasks assigned to juts one person in the company. Do one-person projects deserve the status of project management? (Meredith, & Mantel, pp. 12-78, 2005) Despite the fact, this would involve definite staring point, would have a deadline, would have time and resource constraints, performance requirements, budget and others, yet it is difficult to regard this as project management. One-person projects are more of self-management than project management. Another distinction that is necessary to have is regarding the basic definition of project and other tasks. “A project is unique endeavor that is undertaken to produce a unique product, service or result” (Verzuh, pp. 17-56, 2005) (Portny, Portny, Mantel Jr., Meredith, Kramer, & Sutton, pp. 9-45, 2007). Keeping in mind this definition and the nature of projects, they do not deserve mixing with other repetitive tasks. Projects are temporary in nature and are solutions for problems faced by the organization. They have to unique, some how that the organization has not done before. A common sight in organizations in “working project managers.” For the past few years, there has been debate between management circles that is this best option to have working project mangers. Project managers who are performing a couple of tasks at the same time: contributing to the project with their skills like the rest of the team and leading the whole team as well. Experts view this as a disaster because this is expecting a little too much from your project manager (Frigenti, & Comninos, pp. 23-74, 2002). With this approach, at the end of day, either the project manager would show lacking as a leader or either as a team member. It would be better to leave your project manager with a specific task of leading and managing the team. However, for smaller teams of three to four people, there is no harm in having working project mangers (Heerkens, pp. 15-41, 2007). Another very important point that related to the process of project management is that in the traditional approach of project management experts argue, “You should move on once you are finished” (Heerkens, pp. 15-41, 2007). However, the project management of the 21st century says that transfer all your lessons learned to your subordinates and your team so that for the next time things happen in a better way. Another problem that project management encounter is sometimes they “adjust their targets with the way they feel it” (Heerkens, pp. 15-41, 2007). Howeve,r according to the process and basic definition of project management, in the very beginning of the project management process they get to know that how to measure their performance against a yardstick. If they think, they are well ahead then keep going and if they are short of performance then take corrective action as soon as they get to know it. In old times, people used a proverb, “finish what you start.” This would be disaster if nay project management would take this seriously and a faith or belief for himself. Project management is a process and approach that offers the yardsticks of monitoring, controlling, and checking at every stage. As mentioned earlier, the basic reasons of brining project management as unique subject is just because the fact that organizations wanted to minimize the risk that they were incurring. With “finishing what they start,” project mangers would put the organization into a very risky situation. The art of project management argues to leave a project if at any point in time it does not appeals to be feasible because projects are a matter of profits not a matter of life and death (Frigenti, & Comninos, pp. 23-74, 2002). Lastly, the team dynamics is a vital part of the project management. As argued earlier in the paper that, technically, one-person projects are not true project management. Before starting, any project the team should understand each other, their dynamics, the do’s, and don’ts since that would be helpful for the team, for the project and for the organization as a whole (Portny, Portny, Mantel Jr., Meredith, Kramer, & Sutton, pp. 9-45, 2007). Project Constraints One of the earliest discoveries made, with regard of Project Management was its constraints. It is quite simple to understand that you cannot get all the fishes from the ocean with one net at a time. There are always constraints and opportunity costs. With scare resources and natural inefficiency, one would always realize that for having a greater share of object “A,” he or she would have to forgo some share of object “B.” The same principle is applicable to the science of project management (Portny, Portny, Mantel Jr., Meredith, Kramer, & Sutton, pp. 9-45, 2007). Time, performance, and cost are the three major and traditional constraints, which are also known as fast, good, and cheap. However, with recent studies in this subject, authors have come up with another constraint that they regard as the fourth dimension of “scope” or magnitude of the project (Meredith, & Mantel, pp. 12-78, 2005). The basic rule here is that at most, a project manger can decide on having desirable levels of any three of these and with his or her decisions, the fourth quantity would automatically alter. For example, that if a project manager desires and plans to produce a high quality product (performance), within two months (time), on a countrywide level (Scope or magnitude) then the project manager would not get the chance to define or restrict its cost levels (Verzuh, pp. 17-56, 2005). The project manger would have to bear a higher cost than projected for higher standards of quality, less time and huge magnitude. The same process is true for the rest of the variables as well. This above-discussed example in the form of a mathematical expression would look like: C= f (P, T, S) (Verzuh, pp. 17-56, 2005) It reads that cost is function or depends on the levels of desired performance, time, and scope. Processes or stages of Project Management This part of the paper focuses on dividing project management into distinct phases in order to provide a better understanding of the process. The following figure shows the traditional steps or method of project management. It is important to note here that not all projects would follow this cycle. Some projects would undergo many stages before even the stage one or concept. Some projects die at the first stage. Some projects manage to go some stages further and then die. Some projects witness the stage two and three multiple times. The first stage is the concept or initiation stage for project management. At this stage, the nature and scope of the whole project comes into consideration. Designing, discussing, reviewing, and analyzing the new project in terms of its possible strengths and weaknesses happen in this stage (Cleland, & Ireland, pp. 15-74, 2006). The financial analysis also takes its places and a full flash financial budget is prepared for the project as well. The discussion also involves the expectations of the stakeholders. When the project managers acquire some success in drawing the overall picture of the projects, then the administration views it for the approval and their input. It is vital here to note that if something goes wrong here at this stage then it is highly unlikely that the project would be able to survive for long (Kerzner, pp. 23-102, 2009). Project managers and the top management is responsible for making sure that everything goes that happens in this stage in smooth, clear and understandable enough so that it can be communicated, understood and implemented by the team and other employees (Heerkens, pp. 15-41, 2007). The second stage comes when the project actually comes to the team and the team engages in defining the problem. It is crucial because if the team fails to define the problem or agree on a common problem or defines and identifies the wrong problem then the project would stop right there. There is no right way of solving the wrong problem and even if there were, then at the end of the day it would be worthless. Experts agree that projects most of the projects fail at this stage or most of the projects fail due to the inefficiencies at this stage. The projects for which no clear problems exist, those in common practice get the title of “headless chicken projects” (Portny, Portny, Mantel Jr., Meredith, Kramer, & Sutton, pp. 9-45, 2007). They are given this name because of the fact that they are very similar to those chicken whose head is been chopped off and the blood is swelling all over the place from its body before it is technically dead and gone. It is after that, when some one stands up and says that this chicken is dead or in the terms of this paper, this project is dead. So moving forward with undefined and unclear definition stage is very much similar to waiting for the headless chicken to die officially. Then comes the stage of planning where all the strategy and polices are made and the project comes on to scene in front of the team. A small testing of the project is also if possible. For most of the projects, this stage takes quite a lot of time since before the final and formal execution of the project; this is the stage where all the planning has to happen. Before moving to the next stage of execution of the project, this stage where it is important to get the surety that all the stakeholders are satisfied and onboard for this project (Kerzner, pp. 23-102, 2009). After planning, comes the time to execute the plan. Not only the formal execution of the plan happens at this stage but also the monitoring and controlling also happens. Providing the team with resources, integrating all the possible resources, reviewing the plans, checking out the deadlines and performing all the activities, all this happens under the banner of this stage. In short, whatever planning and decisions were there in the past stages seem to implement here. All the discussions, meetings, and thoughts become actions here (Lock, pp. 25-89, 2007). Very crucial is to closely monitor and evaluate the performances of the team at this stage. While the team is busy in performing there tasks, the project manager is busy comparing the current performances and standards to the ones that are expected. If the current levels are above the ones that were expected, then the team gets appreciation and praise for their job, at time tangible rewards as well (Portny, Portny, Mantel Jr., Meredith, Kramer, & Sutton, pp. 9-45, 2007). However, if the team is underperforming, then it is again the duty of project manager to take corrective actions by reallocating the resources, hiring, and firing or at an extreme changing the whole course of action of the project. Feedback is also an important element at this stage, which managers require and consider at this stage. If the project survives the execution and monitoring stage, it means that the project has entered into the last stage of this management and development (Kerzner, pp. 23-102, 2009). This stage is the handing over or closing out of the project. Since organizations assign projects to their work teams, this becomes the job of the team to give it back to the organization once it is over. After finishing all the formalities and documentation, the teams realize that this is the time to say goodbye and allow the administration to view and analyze their work (Portny, Portny, Mantel Jr., Meredith, Kramer, & Sutton, pp. 9-45, 2007). Administration also provides the team with their feedback and comments and this is the point where the team can sit back and evaluate what happened and what did not happen. By answering all these questions, they get into a better position of performing better in the coming projects. In addition, there are other projects management procedures and plans as well out of which a couple of them are worth discussing. The first and the oldest plan is the one provided by Henry L. Gantt. Management authorities know her as the earliest management gurus and founder of scientific management. The term used for her approach is Gantt chart, which is still used in many management and project management circles (Lewis, pp. 23-28, 2006). A chart developed by her focuses on indicating and showing the deadlines of specific tasks in projects in forms of bars on bar chart. On the Gantt chart, the time is on the horizontal axis and the specific tasks related to the project, on the vertical axis (Portny, Portny, Mantel Jr., Meredith, Kramer, & Sutton, pp. 9-45, 2007). With every task that ends or happens, a bar is there to show its expected time of completion then another line is there right beneath it to mark its actual completion. In this way, it becomes easy for project mangers to check that at any point in time where they are standing or lacking. Gantt chart is still one of the best ways to make monitor the time needed for completion of projects and the deadlines completion. Another method which is very common is the PERT or Program Evaluation and Review Technique. This technique goes one-step beyond the Gantt charts and identifies the interrelation of specific tasks in a project, which is one of the shortcomings of the Gantt charts. There are six distinct steps in setting up a project with PERT (Kerzner, pp. 23-102, 2009): 1. The first pre-requisite for this approach is to specify all the activities or tasks in the project. Any ambiguity would not allow this technique to show its efficiency. 2. Right after it, the sequencing should come on the scene. In other words, a clear explanation should be there that which activities or task would come after which ones. 3. Then comes the time to draw a clear diagram, which reflects the sequence relationships of all the tasks 4. Note down the Optimistic, normal and pessimistic, all three time estimates for the specific tasks. 5. Calculating the critical path, this is also known as the longest time, required for the completion of the project. 6. As the project continues, the project manager is responsible for monitoring and controlling all the activities. Conclusively, the paper has discussed some of the significant aspects of project management and the approach that can yield tangible advantages to organisations. 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). 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