The Roles in Project Implementation - Case Study Example

Project Management Strategies By Yours Department 6th December Project Management Strategies Introduction: It is a common perception of all parties involved directly or indirectly with a project that success must be met finally. However, this is not necessarily, as professional jealousy limits the capabilities of line managers, senior resources of the project and projects’ subcontractors. Executive or top management needs consideration of all types of projects regardless of their interests. Sometimes, clashes among top management result into failure of a project, but they cannot oppose openly. In project development, two minds fight together as one wants success of the project and second want benefits from its failure. External as well as internal threats exist for a project. Aim of this paper is not to differentiate between the external and internal threats. Project implementation team comprises of various participants, and each participant is placed into a category depending on the roles in the project implementation. Several project management strategies have been used for success of the project through the creative teams. Single Integrated Project Team Strategy Project players or participants need to be aligned with their single goal, if they achieve their target within specified time and cost they will benefit. On other hands, if they fail in achieving their goals, they all will lose the reward. From single definition, impression is created that everyone is part of the team. Every project has its starting and ending dates. However, participation of every participant is impossible as participation in a project stretches from clients at the top to the goods provider at the shop. Before the initiation of the project, some of the shelf items are already developed, and other items are built during the progress and implementation phase of the project (De Villiers and Pretorius, 2006). In order to achieve the required goals, process of collaborative and integrated teams is called vital. High technology projects require investigation for the role of the integrated efforts as compared to the aggressiveness for actual goals meeting in cost and time. Smith and Offodile (2008) also revealed that product newness; product complexity, technological uncertainty, and product acceleration variables were not immediate in control of project managers. However, integrated teams, manufacturing environment, top management, and a collaborative environment are considered necessary for the project success. For construction projects, team effectiveness has been highly impacted by the integration. Award winning teams of completed projects have their level of integration. However, level of integration may be at large or small scale and have similar effects of teamwork. However, other factors of performance improvement are unclear. There must be further research to find the factors, which impact the creativity and performance of a team (Baiden and Price, 2011). Many state and federal US government agencies use the strategy of integrated project teams. Integrated project team from commercial, as well as government organizations, work on the principle of Integrated Process and Process Development (IPPD). Concept of IPPD has been initially aimed for total quality management. Electronic and auto industry is widely dependent upon the integrated teamwork for success of their projects. A multifunctional team performs all activities from project planning to project closing. These integrated teams optimize the product quality process, manufacturing processes and sustainment processes by meeting the performance and cost objectives (IT Economics Corporation, 2010). Under the concept of integrated team management strategy, most of the internal conflicts and disputes among participants are easily avoided. However, it is naïve to say that no dispute or conflict exists among the team members for most well-meaning and cooperative teams (American Institute of Architects, 2007). Formal agreement arises from the alliance in the form of a single integrated teamwork that involves all parties and aligns the objectives by adopting the win a win approach to resolving the issues. A single integrated team works on an agreement with no dispute that ensures the interdependence among the team members (Nevin, 2014). Risk Aversion Strategy in project management Risks in projects impact highly the project chains due to sudden natural disasters, so project team in the enterprise needs to establish an emergency response instrument. This instrument helps the managers for timely identification of risks and adopts the effective measures. This mechanism is aimed to stimulate the project teams’ subjective initiatives, and concentrate on the risks relying on their abilities (Li et al., 2011). Electric-distribution networks are much interested in the quality regulation and performance-based regulation in the electric market. In a study, Alvehag and Soder (2011) developed an approach of the reliability investment decisions in situations when quality regulation was exposed of financial risks. A very popular approach named as “Monte-Carlo simulation” is used for assessing the risks for the investment projects. In the power market, the inherent uncertainty induces the risk that becomes costly if risk is not identified in time. Bannerman (2008) called that risk control in various software project requires participants’ contribution towards the project success. There exists a gap between the private and public sector in risk management and risk practices. Software projects never follow the development process of an uniform structure and project teams involved in handling such software projects face challenges and risks. Therefore, formal ways of risk management for projects do not result into project success. Risk aversion strategy is introduced for eliminating the risk influences on project success. Project management remains easier for a short duration projects because managers lead the individual projects from planning to closeout and minimize the impacts on the projects’ performance. If a project of 75 days is from a shorter duration, this project is under capability for cost minimizing. Otherwise, overtime for this project will result into budget overruns and has a risk of overtime amount that is paid to employees on weekend jobs. Optimistic duration is considered more appropriate for schedule of the project but poses a risk of quality as activities crash can jeopardize the project’s quality (Anuar and Ng, 2011). Project tools, budget, schedule, customer involvement and positive attitudes impact the success of IT projects. Stakeholders also influence the success of projects as they interact directly or indirectly. Risk aversion gets influence from the decision maker’s attitude and variability in the success of the project. Invest making on the high-risk projects provides a high return because risk identification processes are in place. Risk handling implies the actions taken to minimize the risks’ impacts in ways of risk avoidance, risk acceptance, risk mitigation and risk transfer (Bhoola et al., 2014). Decision-Making strategy in Project Management From theory, decentralized decision making has been called as more effective than centralized decision making in an uncertain environment. However, in a few recent studies, researchers showed that centralized decision making was efficient for product development teams. Software project development and management teams face the issue of schedule execution and evaluation. Contingency handling and automated schedule monitoring result into timely delivery of software products. Each participant in the team has three cooperative agents: a scheduler, bookkeeper and a proxy (Houari and Far, 2010). In a recent work, Marmier et al., (2014) pointed out those most suitable individuals to perform a task and decide the ways of dealing with risk in uncertain conditions made projects successful. Project risk management strategy and resource management strategy are integrated together. Decision support system is devised to help the management in their decision for using the appropriate approach for risk treatment and assignment planning. In the petroleum industry, an approach of group decision making is used for making risk response after project investment. Initially, the project team identifies the risks and their exposures for projects. Each risk indices is assigned a weight or multi-objective functions by using the multi-objective programming (Wang et al., 2010). For company’s growth and team-creativity, a number of decision-making methods are used in the product development. However, no such a supporting system has been developed to make a quick decision for portfolio management in the uncertainties. Oh et al., (2012) paid attention to develop a fuzzy expert system that was based on the decision-making framework and aimed for dealing the uncertainties found in resource allocation, portfolio matrixes, and project evaluation scoring models. From this research, a fuzz interface-based model was established for evaluation criteria. Finally, they developed an expert system that encompassed the company strategy and operational knowledge for a rule based system. Feasibility of this new approach was verified by its applications in the electronic industry of Korea. The project portfolio management (PPM) is helpful in managing the decision on the investment by following the risk criteria, and concerns all through the product portfolio. The PPM also helps in deciding that which product should be discontinued, developed and introduced and determines the products, which are profitable for a long term or in line with the company’s strategy. A project manager with the team members must be familiar with the portfolio management (Ruhe and Wohlin, 2014). Decision making in the process of designing follows the stages, tactics and execution process occurrence in a routine. In decision-making cycle, design relevant meetings also become the essential part of the decision-making cycle. In meetings, effect and failure mode analysis, problem analysis and decision analysis are significantly discussed. However, faster feedback on the project’ progress in reference of management aspects of quality, cost and throughput time provide the progress control. This approach of design decision making is clearly illustrated by the information automation department in the industry (Viegen and Van Mal, 2002). From these strategies in project management, it has become clear that tradeoffs exist among the strategies. In a supportive environment, risk is not averse through creativity but efforts result into a new product. However, the relationship between creative thinking and domain relevant skills of team members establishes there (Hoegl and Parboteeth, 2007). In the current era of project development, innovative strategies are widely used for managing the complex projects and uncertainties in these projects due to lack or compete of scarce resources (Gemuden et al., 2013). Major project management strategies enhance the team capabilities to eliminate the risk impacts through the top management decision considering the team members’ concerns and suggestions (Seddon and Herriott, 2009). When team are integrated in a single unit, many organizational risks and conflicts among employees is minimized the results into project success. Conclusion In this paper, main project management strategies, which make a project management creative through integration, rational decision making and adopting risk aversion strategies. Core work has been accomplished on project management strategies, which produce success optimal results for project management teams. Although these strategies have the tradeoff, but show improved capability and enhanced performance of project management teams. Some key example from Electronic, auto-mobile and petroleum industries’ project development present the success of these strategies. Overall, the advantageous of project development strategies implemented through creative teams show good outcomes for complex projects. References Alvehag K., and Soder L. (2011). “Risk-based method for distribution system reliability investment decisions under performance-based regulation”, Generation, Transmission & Distribution, IET, IEEE. vol.5 no.10. PP.1062-1072. American Institute of Architects (2007). Integrated project delivery: A guide, AIA National AIA California Council. Anuar N., and Ng K.P. (2011). “The Role of Time, Cost and Quality in Project Management”, In Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management (IEEM), 2011 IEEE International Conference on 6-9 December 2011, in Singapore, IEEE. 630 - 634. 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