Project Management & Leadership - Literature review Example

Project Management Report Project Management Report Part A The contemporary enterprises depend on skill-based, human focused and technology driven approaches to management (Hamilton, Mitchell & Mangan, 2014; Murray et al., 2006). In pursuit of creating business values, the enterprises are growingly embracing project management as a way to gain competitive advantage. Traditional project management adventures did focus on attaining operational efficiency and delivering services or products within a predefined budget and schedule (Frigenti & Comninos, 2002). However, the present business challenges, coupled with fierce competition, have changed the dimensions of the current business projects. In fact, organizations currently use project management as a way to achieve strategic objectives. Baker (2010) defines project management as a concept that splits the progress towards a strategic objective into smaller portions. Upon the accomplishment of each task, the project drives the organization closer to the milestone associated with that project. Schwalbe (2012) adds that a project is considered complete if it has met all the milestones. In many cases, meeting all the milestones draws a business closer to its strategic objectives. In his description of the strategic approach to continuous development, Hutchins (2008) posits that strategic objectives need to be specific, appropriate, measurable, time-oriented and realistic. This concurs with Jones’ (2011) idea that every business entity pursuing a project would focus the endeavor on fulfilling a given strategic goals. Equally, a good project lays more emphasis on meeting a single chief goal. In essence, this goal should be the strategic objective of the project in question. For instance, if an organization’s innovation goal is to come up with a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) utility, it makes sense for the project to focus on developing this product in a fashion that will let the organization provide well-timed responses to customer needs and concerns. One of the reasons why businesses consider the use of project management to attain strategic objectives is the ability of the concept to optimize efficiency and effectiveness as pertains to resource use (Dinsmore & Rocha, 2012). Effectiveness focuses on attaining objectives and goals, which are both crucial to realizing the overall success of a project. On the other hand, efficiency pays attention to attaining a maxim level of output for a given input level. To an enterprise, effectiveness in this context means pursuing the right things while efficiency would mean doing things in the right way. The two states put together can indisputably represent the ultimate desire of every business enterprise (According to Bolles & Hubbard, 2007). Project management features a structured process that can allow organizations achieve this state, though this is pegged on the competency of the involved project manager. In this light, entities that invest in incompetent managers could become more susceptible to wastage or resources. Nevertheless, organizations constantly resort to project management as a way to execute specialized forms of management that bear a relationship with other functional strategies. The ability of the PM concept to strike appropriate balances is felt more by the mid-management executives who faced the greatest hurdles in their course of operation. At moments when these executives have often been compelled to strike appropriate balances between the operational and strategic demands, the PM concept has always come to their rescue through provision of methodologies to stick to the strategic goals even when operational tasks literally press for effort and time (Bolles, 2002). Kerzner (2013) reports that this ability of the PM concept motivates business entities even the more because it is conscious of the fact that despite the operational activities being urgent, it is the strategic activities that turn to be of utmost importance to organizations engaging in projects. In simple terms, organizations perceive PM as a tool that can balance the daily operational activities and put more priority on the attainment of strategic goals. The importance of prioritizing long-term strategic objectives over the short-term operational activities becomes more evident in the current recessional state of business environments. In general, business entities are beginning to acknowledge that the urgent and short-term operational tasks should never overrule their more useful strategic focus (Tjahjana, Dwyer &Habib, 2009). Many business enterprises feature the belief that the operational urgencies are there to stay, but compliance with the enterprise-wide goals should never be avoided. Consequently, they have ended up adopting a Project management Office (PMO) which serves as a functional unit for planning, managing and monitoring projects across different units of an enterprise. However, as Englund, Graham & Dinsmore (2003) report, the same recessional environment could prevent other business entities from establishing PMO or hire a dedicated project manager. Nonetheless, the presence of a dedicated unit to manage enterprise projects still stands out as the best way to survive in the recessional business world. Hossenlopp (2010) attributes the growing use of project management in fulfilling strategic objectives to the technology-initiated wind of change dominating all spheres of organizations. Bureaucracies are now deemed as tools that can impair an enterprise’s responsiveness to change and ability to sustain a competitive advantage. This contrasts the scene in 1960s when increasing the overall productivity was the only focus of business enterprises. These days, clients demand for functionality. As Boone (2012) reports, no customer will be pleased to make a phone call to enquire about a product or address a concern following the purchase of a given product; they want to chat online, to send mail messages and probably take and upload photos pertaining to their concerns via the social media platforms. These needs call on managers to adopt flexible structures that can be as responsive as possible to such changes hence the need for a project-based approach to management. However, managing projects to aid technological changes could make some businesses overexcited and end up planning expensive projects just in the name of staying abreast with technology. The contemporary business world defines success in terms of the ability of a business entity to win with a given market environment, and firm often employ economic and financial indicators to establish their success level (Information Resources Management Association, & Khosrow-Pour, 2002). Relating this to project management, a number of projects define success based on project success factors and project success criteria. The former refers to the aspects of a project that could be manipulated to heighten the probability of success. On the other hand, the latter refers to the measures that are employed in judging the success level of a project. To the extent that business entities already believe that business entities are already acknowledging that organizational improvements are unattainable in the absence of effective identification and measurement of success, project management seems to be the only worthwhile pathway to attaining strategic success goals. One downside of this success factor is that wrongly defined metrics could lead a business entity that is has accomplished its strategic goals when the reality bears an otherwise. Project management comes in handy in this regard because it can issue effective metrics that can enable managers to respond to issues appropriately alongside ensuring that the reinforced actions in the enterprise-wide context remain desirable to the involved project team. Reports point to the idea of vast projects failing leading to financial losses for the organizations that pursued the failed projects. Though numerous causes could be attributed to the widespread failure, metrics management stands out to be the main reason behind this failure. Project management offers a scheme that allows organizations to improve their metrics management and consequently avoid financial losses that are typical of failed projects. It is worth noticing that it takes the hard and soft skills of a competent project manager to help a business entity to keep financial losses at bay. For this reason, business entities deem project management as a tool that can help them to manage their project metrics in a cost-effective fashion and draw them closer their strategic financial goals. Metrics are crucial in keeping stakeholders updated about the status of the projects that a business enterprise is pursuing. In essence, stakeholders need to have confidence that projects employ appropriate metrics and that the measurements used actually depict a truthful and clear representation of the project’s current status. This need often calls for the manager alongside the involved stakeholders to come to an agreement as pertains to the metrics for use in a project context in addition to specifying the ways measurements are to be made. In a number of cases, the metrics will often be classified into business-based, success-based, project-based or project management process metrics. Inclusion of the business-based perspective could serve as evidence that project management also focuses on delivering business values hence the widespread use to actualize the strategic goals in varied organizational contexts. One of the metrics that project managers often focus on is cost. Projects are in many cases tied to given budgets (Levy, 2009). Thus, departments might be compelled to attain their respective project objectives within given financial constraints. For example, a constructions department might need to ensure that it expenditure on the acquisition of materials and the actual building process falls within the slotted budget. Similarly, a marketing department would need to ensure that its expenditure on sponsorship of youth sports falls within the predefined marketing budget. In either case, PM performs a crucial role of keeping organizations on toes as far as financial expenditures are concerned. It is these benefits that make business enterprises to explore the benefits associated with the proper management of PM cost metrics in order to draw closer to the strategic objectives. Other than the primary success factors like cost, time and scope, the concept of project management also encompasses issues like use of the name of a client as reference, harmony with the local and international authorities, corporate reputation, ethical conduct, technical superiority, ethical conduct as well as strategic alignment. Notably, these attributes are all crucial for the successful operation of a business enterprise. For instance, a business entity with a bad reputation might not survive efficiently in the face of the ever-growing competition. In the same way, a business that constantly rages wars against the local regulations could be ordered to terminate its operation through a court ruling. In the light of attaining an organization-wide efficiency, the secondary success factors could even turn out to be of greater significance than the primary success factors hence the use of project management to achieve strategic objectives. Another reason behind the growing preference of project management as a tool to realize strategic objectives is the communication aspect. As Silvius & Tharp (2013) report, communication is a fundamental process when it comes to project success. Typically, team members need to communicate to their managers and the manager also needs to communicate back to his team members. Similarly, the involved team needs to clearly communicate the intention of every project endeavor to the associated stakeholders through avenues like direct meetings, mails as well as newsletters. In addition, PM emphasizes frequent updates on the progress of projects, occasional consultative adjustment of project plans, assignment of responsibilities and roles along with continual appraisal of project milestones. It is worthwhile considering that the PM-featured communication process can never in any way break the communication barriers that the staff could have based on personal issues. As such, the success level of PM in terms of cultivating a unified communication system has to be preceded by the willingness of the involved staff members to communicate freely while letting go of their individual differences. This perspective of the PM concept allows organizations to foster enhanced communication which is crucial in the achievement of the long-term strategic objectives. The planning aspect of the project management concept also explains why business entities prefer it when thinking of how to realize long-term strategic goals. At the most basic level, project management charges the project managers with the duty to plan a chain of tasks alongside the materials and resources needed to accomplish the identified tasks. Underpinning this is an attempt to answer questions like: What task should succeed the other? Which type of material is appropriate for what need and within what timeframe? Which resource or team member is better placed to serve all through the project’s life cycle and which resource or team needs to be engaged during specific instances? Besides, the plans often encompass ways to mitigate risks that could befall the project while it is on course. Putting these together, the PM concept helps business enterprises operate as entities with a direction regarding the future, and this is crucial in fulfilling strategic goals. In another dimension, the ultimate fulfillment of the strategic goal is influenced by the strictness with which a business entity follows the outlined plans. In a human resource perspective, project management helps organizations to appreciate the variations in the talents of the human capital. Relating this to Belbin’s theory on team selection, project managers often choose teams with varied talents and personality in order to aid productivity (Banerjee, 2013). If this is properly done, an organization gets closer to reap the best out of the potentially desperate skills set among its employees. Other than this state drawing a business entity towards the achievement of the strategic goals, it is unimaginable the far that a unified workforce can take a business enterprise to. However, the workforce risks drifting even further if a project manager’s selection of a workforce is informed by some misconceptions about given tea members of the organization in entirety. The misconception notwithstanding, organizations have always considered projects that use proper team selection procedures as an avenue to foster a unified workforce in the long run. Ferraro (2012) argues that the current employees never find satisfaction in routinely tasks for which they do not assume any responsibilities. More specifically, a number of individuals crave for more hands-on, creative and empowered positions that allow them create real impacts. Project-oriented business entities are capable of offering this because they pay attention to strategic outcomes and goals instead of delivering services in a routinely fashion. This structure arguably makes an enterprise to be a point of attraction for the skilled lot whose presence within a workforce increases the success level associated with the achievement of the strategic goals. This factor, combined with the communication aspect discussed above, helps project managers to come to terms with the realities that unfold when working with the human kind. In so doing, the manager will end up with a happy and productive staff in the long term. So embracing project-based management allows business entities to realize the capabilities of their enterprise-wide resources. Finally, organizations prefer the use of project management to realize given strategic objectives because of the uniqueness and temporal structure of projects. Despite businesses experiencing ongoing and continuous operation, project can serve as temporal ventures intended to produce individualized processes, services or products. In a number of cases, this unique state implies that there are never any predefined steps to follow when developing the project deliverable. The impact of this is twofold. On one hand, it allows a project manager to gain the experience and expertise of formulating plans that are aimed at delivering the project deliverables. On the other hand, the project phases always command seamless integration of human and financial resources all through the departments of an enterprise whilst integrating budgeting, planning and communication skills to lead the project to completion. In a nutshell, the contemporary business enterprises have ceased from treating project management as a part-time adventure. Instead, they see the concept as a tool that can aid the achievement strategic objectives. This calls on the project-based business entities to be at the forefront in terms of defining, executing and evaluating holistic project strategies that suit the dynamic business requirements whilst building capabilities to cater for future needs. Bibliography BAKER, D. A. (2010).Multi-company project management: maximizing business results through strategic collaboration. Ft. 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