The Failure of Fire Control Project - Essay Example

The Failure of Fire Control Project- A Case Study of Project Management Executive Summary The purpose of this paper was to present a theoretical scaffold of project management and its relevance in an organization through an evaluation of failure of a fire control project. In addition, the aim was to explore how organizational project management system can be conceptualized as a function in an organization (Andersen, 2008). The critical issues in the approach of project management and its application in the business environment were analyzed. Additionally, various tools and techniques that are used in the project management were learned through the case study of fire control project. Also, the impact of hard and soft skills in managing a variety of projects were critically assessed (APM., 2012). The project structure and the project leadership were highly focused on to analyze the reason of failure of the project. As per the evaluation of the reasons for failure of the fire control project appropriate recommendations was provided to the organization for effective project management. Table of Contents 1. Executive Summary 2 2. Introduction 4 3. Brief Background of the Fire Control Project 4 4. Project Management in Evaluation of Fire Control Project 5 4.1. Project Organization (Structure) 5 4.2. Project Leadership 8 5. Conclusion 10 6. Recommendations 11 Reference list 13 2. Introduction The purpose of the paper is to evaluate the reasons behind the failure of fire control project and the issues and relevance of project management. Observing the current economic crisis, petitions about the management of numerous projects seems to have increased particularity in generating increased value from the investments. Doing projects right is not sufficient (Dulewicz and Higgs, 2003). Delivering the projects within a calculated time is what now the project managers need to manage. It has been increasingly acknowledged that project management entails something more than the dexterous competent management of each project. It also needs a set of systems, methods, structures and abilities that enables an organization to take on the appropriate project and to support them organizationally. Project management is a difficult task with vital responsibilities (Gardiner, 2005). Various tools employed in project management are PERT charts and Critical path method. Program evaluation and review technique is a scheduling and control tool for defining and managing the important tasks that are necessary to complete the project and the CPM diagrams are used to describe the interrelationships of the tasks of a project and directs the order in which the important activities needs to be completed (Larson and Gray, 2011). Various hard and soft skills play a vital role in management of different projects. The hard skills is the technical aspects of the project managers’ role and include the development of work breakdown structure, critical path and project dashboards. The soft skills consists certain interpersonal skills such a project manager’s efficient leadership, communication, problem solving and decision making (Lloyd-Walker and Walker, 2011). There are many challenges in project management and is application in a business environment. These issues lead to failure of a project that will be critically discussed with the help of fire control project. 3. Brief Background of the Fire Control Project The objective of the fire control project was to enhance and improve the resilience, efficiency and technology of the English Fire and Rescue Service (Meredith and Mantel, 2012). The fire control project was commenced in 2004 and it was expected that it will be able to complete by October 2009. In 2007, the communities and local government department entered into a contract with European Air and Defence Systems (EADS), in order to develop and install the computer system underpinning the fire control project. However, many issues came along with the implementation of the project such as it was subject to a number of delays and the costs associated with the project kept on rising over its entire lifetime (Kerzner, 2009). The department finally terminated the project in December 2010 after drawing conclusion that the project could not be delivered and completed within an acceptable and estimated timeframe. At the point the decision was made, the department approximated that it had spent £245 million on the project and later calculated that the end of the project would lead to the increase of cost to £635 million which is more than five times the original estimate of £120 million (Koster, 2010). 4. Project Management in Evaluation of Fire Control Project 4.1. Project Organization (Structure) An organization can be described as a management structure applicable to a particular project, programme or portfolio and the environment of the organization in which it operates. A project organization structure can be understood as the reporting structures, processes, systems and methods of executing a project (Maylor, 2010). Accountability and autonomy are commonly held responsible for the project failures. There are four main type of organization structure such as the functional structure, the virtual structure, the matrix structure and the projectised organization. There are various factors that influence the project structure selection such as size and period of the project, strategic relevance, need for innovation, essence of integration, project site, budget and time constraints or resource availability and environmental complexity (Office of Government Commerce., 2009). The key project roles are project assurance, quality assurance, change authority and administration (Kerzner, 2009). The various challenges of role selection are: availability of resources, resource expenses, conflicting priorities, appropriate skill set and expertise and accountability lines (Koster, 2010). The general outline of the levels of a project organization is depicted as under. Figure 1: The general outline of a project organization (Source: APM 2012) The various challenges faced by a project manager in developing a project organization are: current site of the function, possibility of becoming too centralised and it does not work well for all organizations (Pinto, 2013). The organization structure followed in the fire control project is presented below in which all the departments were segmented aligning the respective roles and responsibilities of the team members of the project. Figure 2: The organization structure of fire control project (Source: Meredith and Mantel, 2012) The fire control project failed due to faulty preparation of project organization structure. The project structure developed by the department is projectised organization structure. In projectised organization structure most of the recourses are utilized in completion of the project work (Langley, 2000). They are adaptive and the team members can learn from others experience. In this structure the project manager has full time group members working under his supervision. All the team members are grouped together and are generally co-located during the project in order to achieve optimum performance. The project manager has the full authority over resources to that are to be utilized in the project. He is in charge of controlling the project funds and job assignments. The project manager could not assign the department wise roles to its team members and did not educate them regarding the tasks of the project (Larson, 2004). The project failed with increased costs than expected. Moreover, the team members were not aware of their respective roles and the estimated budget. The lack of understandable roles and responsibilities resulted in increased misunderstanding, inaccuracy and omissions. Working under continuous and excessive project schedule pressure contributed to the project failure. To avoid such failures in future the department needs to understand the concept of the projectised organization structure and accordingly assign the responsibilities to the team members in attaining project objectives in a timely and budgeted manner (Hobday, 2000). 4.2. Project Leadership Leadership can be defined as an ability to ascertain vision and direction in order to influence and align the group members involved in a project towards attaining a common goal and to empower and motivate team members to achieve success (Hughes, 2001). Leading a project to success needs an efficient leadership which will get the work done by the group members effectively and in a timely manner. There are various forms of leadership styles such as programme leadership and portfolio leadership. There are many other leadership styles in the project management such as Laissez-Faire Leadership, situational, transactional and transformational leadership which determines the success of the project (Jamieson and Morris, 2004). Table 1: Theoretical framework of project management leadership styles Transactional Leadership: - Contingent Reward -Management-by-Exception (active) -Management-by-Exception (passive) Transformational Leadership: - idealized authority (attributed) -Idealized Influence (behavioural) - encouraging Motivation - rational Stimulation Laissez-Faire Leadership: -Laissez-Faire Leadership -let group members to take decisions Transactional leaders direct and encourage their team members in the direction of goal achievement by illustrating role and task requirements (Eisenhardt, 2002). Transformational leaders motivate the team members to go beyond their own self interest for the betterment of the organization and are capable of having an extraordinary effect on his group members. Figure 3: Leadership styles in project lifecycle (Source: Dinsmore, 2003) One of the major causes of failure of the fire control project was faulty leadership. The project was launched too early before time by taking decisions on procurement strategy. The project manger and its team over relied on the external consultants and also there was a high turnover of senior managers (Dinsmore, 2003). No one among them was held responsible for the failure of the project. The success of the project solely depended on the co-operation among the team members of local fire and control authorities which lacked to a great extent. Moreover, the project was poorly designed which lacked early milestones which enabled the department to blame the contractors for project delays. This situation depicts that there was an extraordinary failure of leadership behind the project failure (Dinsmore, 2003). Situational leadership style was implemented by the project. An efficient project manger possesses certain qualities such as he is facilitator, fire fighter, planner, counsellor, advisor, problem solver, co-ordinator, accountant, presenter and manger (Meredith and Mantel, 2012). Among them leadership is crucial to effectively manage a project. Situational leaders demonstrate certain common and critical leadership competencies. They diagnose and develop an understanding of the situation that they are willing to influence and manage the movement of the project tasks (Meredith and Mantel, 2012). These leaders adapt their behaviours to respond to the contingencies of a specific situation and communicate with the team manners in a way that they can understand and accept. Additionally, they are also responsible to estimate the time and costs related to a project and make attempts to stick to the decided time and cost for delivering a project. The failure of situational leadership led the fire control project to underperform, miss the strategic opportunities, underutilization of team members and falling short in meeting project objectives, quality, performance and productivity (Kerzner, 2009). The department needs to learn from such failure of situational leadership and realize the concept of the leadership style to motivate the team members and direct them to complete the project within anticipated time. 5. Conclusion Project management has a key role in attaining project success. As the deployment of project management matures from the portfolio level to the individual projects, the correlation between organizational project management and business value becomes clarified. A project manager’s role is much differentiated from a functional manager’s role. A functional manager is an administrator, has a departmental individuality, concerned with staff management and possesses an authority position whereas; a project manager is a facilitator, systems thinker, a negotiator and is a role manager (Kerzner, 2009). A more involved and efficient project manger produces better results by directing the team members to complete projects in a timely and cost efficient manner. This paper highlighted on the various aspects of project management which contributes to proper structuring and timely completion of a project. Also the paper discussed various challenges in employing project management by analyzing the reasons of failure of the fire control project. In conclusion it can be gathered that proper approach to project management, building a strong project structure and efficient leadership is crucial to be considered by the department for communities and local government to learn from the past mistakes and develop a desirable project in future. 6. Recommendations For effective project management in future, department for Communities and Local Government is recommended the following actions: It is crucial to set up a plan before commencing any project. Appropriate time should be taken for developing a well-thought plan which is critical to the successful completion of a project (Kerzner, 2009). Project managers’ needs to develop their leadership qualities- The essential leadership qualities that need to be developed are: providing structure, communicating clearly, leading by example, encouraging truest and motivating team members (Office of Government Commerce., 2009). The structured outline of the vision of the project needs to be cleared to the team members in order to plan effectively, motivate and direct them in attaining project objectives. Onsite training needs to be provided to the project managers regarding the project management methods and preparation of desirable project structure to enhance the skills of the project managers (Maylor, 2010). Establishing and assigning roles and responsibilities to the team members department wise. Segment the various departments and accordingly establish their authority of the project managers, technical managers and technical leaders. Additionally, strengthening of the project manager’s authority is crucial to the success of the project. Establish and manage project budgets. This can be done by continuously forecasting the budgets and resource usage (Office of Government Commerce., 2009). The team needs to be informed regularly regarding the project budget forecast. Planning the project strategically results to managing costs without any hurdle. Revise the policies, guidelines and manuals aligning the project management to address the continuous project management requirements. Reference list Andersen, E., 2008. Rethinking Project Management. An organisational perspective. Gosport: Prentice Hall. APM., 2012. APM Body of Knowledge. 6th ed. Bucks: APM. Cohen, A. and Bradford, D., 2000. Influence without Authority. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Dinsmore, P.C., 2003. “On the leading edge of management: managing organizations by projects”. PM Network, 10(4), pp. 9-11. Dulewicz, V. and Higgs, M., 2003. Design of a new instrument to assess leadership dimensions and styles. In Henley working paper HWP 0311. Henley-on-Thames: Henley Management College. Eisenhardt, K.M., 2002. “Building theories from case study research”. Academy of Management Review, 14(4), pp. 532-50. Gardiner, P., 2005. Project Management: A Strategic Planning Approach. London: Palgrave. 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