Project Management - the Effectiveness of the Plans - Essay Example

INTRODUCTION The ultimate objective of any business organization is to create wealth for its shareholders and value for the stakeholders. To achieve this objective, business executives are facing increasing challenges due to completion for resources across the world. There are various environmental factors such as increase in salaries, increase in prices of raw materials, increased union demands, possibility of economic slowdown and lack of adequate financial resources which can cause hindrances towards achievement of the objectives. When the management wants to maintain its profitability to grow it has to have better control over its resources through effective management techniques. In this regard project management is a very important area of expertise. It is believed that in today's new economy, traditional structures should give way to project management other temporary management structures that are quick to respond to changes in the environment. NETWROK PURPOSE AND BENEFITS Project management is the planning, organizing, directing and controlling of company resources for a relatively short-term objective that has been established to complete specific goals and objectives. For planning and organizing the resources, Program evaluation and review technique(PERT) and Critical Path Method (CPM) are widely used techniques for better planning and control in project management. It forms the basis for all planning and predicting and these techniques provide the management with the ability to plan for the best possible use of resources to achieve a goal within the stipulated time and allotted budget. These techniques which were used for defense during the World War II, are now used by business managers across the world to get a visibility of the activities involved in the project so that repetition of activities is reduced. It helps the management to handle the uncertainties involved in the program by analyzing how much time is required for each activity and which activity is crucial for the timely completion of the project. It is useful for the management to collect all the relevant information for making decisions. The major deficiency of other methods such as the Gantt, milestone or bubble chart is the inability to show the interdependencies between event s and activities, which is overcome in the network analysis. The foremost advantage of PERT is that it requires planning in detail to create a network of activities. Network development and critical path analysis reveal interdependencies and problem areas that are not very clear if other methods are used. The technique lays its focus on determining where the greatest effort should be made for a project to stay on schedule. The next greatest advantage of network analysis is that the business manager can know about the probability of meeting specified deadlines by development of alternative plans. Another advantage of this analysis is that we can evaluate the effect of changes in the program. For example this technique can evaluate the effect of contemplated shift of resources from the less critical activities to the activities that are identified as probable bottlenecks. Thus resources and performance tradeoffs can be evaluated. This analysis also helps to present even the most complicated data into a diagram which can be presented to the customer/ management which makes the understanding and decision making easier. The network diagram and the calculation of total float is shown in the appendix - 1 and 2 respectively. The total project duration is 73 days and the critical path for the project includes the activities A, B, I, J, L, M, N, O, P, R. If the project starts on May 5th, 2008, the earliest date it will be completed is 13th August, 2008 if it is assumed that there are 5 days working in every week. From the analysis, we can say that when there is a 4 day delay during Q or E, there will not be any change because these activities are not a part of the critical path. When activity P is finished one day in advance, then the whole project will be completed in advance. SUCCESSFUL PROJECT MANAGEMENT - THE PREREQUISITES For the successful completion of a project the project manager should be first clear about the objectives of the project. For example in the case of Benimhanna, the project manager should be clear about what he has to accomplish when it comes to setting up of a new health club. What is the nature of the club, the facilities needed, when the project should be ready and other various aspects which are the characteristic features of the project should be clearly understood. Then the activities needed should be grouped into similar activities. For example, here in this case the manger has to make a list of activates such as the identifying the location of the club, completion of the legal requirements before ground breaking, identifying the budget for the construction, fixing the architects, developing a time plan with the architects, developing checkpoints to analyze where the project is being carried out as planned. These activities have to then broken down into subactivities to make a group of activities. Then each group of activity has to be assigned to the personnel. The identification of the people is the most crucial part of project management. After the identification of the people who are going to be part of the team, they have to be explained about the nature of the project , its scale and its importance to the company. After this the responsibility and accountability have to be fixed to form a performing team. For example, for the task of arranging short term sources of finance for the project, the person responsible will forma work group and he and his workgroup will find out the amount of finance needed and they identify the sources and they arrange the finance for the smooth completion of the project. The following model explains the activities that are crucial for the completion of the project: SKILLS OF MANAGERS For completing a project of such a big scale, the project manager should capable of estimating the resources needed. The resources for the project include, finance, people(technical expertise), materials and time. According to Harold Kerzner, the top ten skills that are essential for the success of a project include team building, leadership, conflict resolution, technical expertise, planning, organization, entrepreneurship, administration, management support and resource allocation. It is important that the personnel management traits that are characteristic to the project manager should be combined with the skills mentioned above to create a unique homogenous style. The way in which the skills needed and traits of the manager are combined depends on various factors such as the project task, nature of the organization, people assigned and techniques employed. The project manager should first possess the team building skills. He should be capable of creating a conducive environment for the teamwork. He should be able to build good interpersonal relationships and be involved and supportive at all levels of management. He should have a clear idea about the goals and objectives and he should be able to communicate it clearly to his team members. And he should be a person beyond politics. Intergroup or intragroup politics caused by individual egos can result in time delay. The next important skill the manager should possess is the leadership skills. He should have the skills to handle interpersonal conflicts and the capability to elicit personal commitments. A good project leader can integrate the team members towards the direction of the ultimate objective. Another major skill required by the project manager is the conflict resolution skill. When two people work together, it is quite natural that conflicts arise, when we are coordinating such a huge project with mammoth investments conflicts are bound to rise. So he should understand the behavioral elements of his team members and should be able to provide a motivating environment. He should also possess competitive technical skills, the market environment to effectively contribute towards finding integrative solutions. He should be conversant with the latest technological trends, product applications, specific markets, nature of the customers and the requirements of the project. Planning skills of a project manager is the backbone of a project. Without the planning skills, a person with excellent teambuilding or technical skills cannot be a project manager. Project planning does not start and stop with drawing diagrams and making presentations, it is far beyond than that. It requires the ability to negotiate the necessary resources and commitments from key personnel in various support organizations and setting up of milestones. The other skill such as the organizational skills, administrative skills, the entrepreneurial skills and resource allocation skills are also important skills to be possessed by a project manager. In addition to this the manager should have some individual traits such as previous experience in project management, flexible, change oriented, innovative thinking, initiative, enthusiastic, charismatic, persuasive, organized and disciplined. These traits have to be combined with the skills to ensure successful project management. PROJECT LIFE CYCLE AND ISSUES According to Cleland(1975), the phases in the lifecycle of a project are , conceptual phase, definition phase, production phase, operational phase and divestment phase. In the first stage that is the conceptual phase, an appraisal of the existing needs and the deficiencies of the existing systems are analyzed. This appraisal serves as the guidance for development of new products/ services. Also the initial technical, environment and economical feasibility of the idea has to be carried out and the human and nonhuman resources required should be estimated. And after this estimation and analysis, objectives, systems, processes, interfaces, policies and budgets have to be developed. This is called as the definition phase. After the estimation of the resources required, a detailed plan to support eh system should be created. The realistic cost , schedule and performance requirements should be estimated. At this stage the intersystem and intrasystem interfaces should be specified. The next stage is the production phases. In this stage, the detailed plans formulated in the previous stages are updated and the resources required to facilitate the production processes such as the furnishings, equipments, supplies, labor, funds have to be managed. It is also essential in this stage that manuals and documents describing the systems in the organization have to be formulated. The operational phase is the phase in which the consumer enjoys the facilities in the club and evaluation of the economic and technical requirements of the project is evaluated through the customer feedback. The last phase in the project management is the divestment phase which involves slowdowns, consolidation, disinvestment, diversion of business interests. In our case of establishing the health club, there are various concerns that can affect the project. First in the conceptual stage, there are chances that the management could select a concept that does not have a sound basis or it may be inappropriate to the to the current economic climate. So first the management should make sure whether the idea is sound enough to create consumer interest. Adequate market and consumer research is needed in this phase to clearly define the concept of the health club. In the next stage, i.e., the definition stage, the tasks and the roles have to be defined clearly. If it is not done so, there is a lot of ambiguity about the responsibility and accountability. Hence the control of resources will be ineffective. Also there are chances that the cost, schedule and technical performance cannot be properly utilized. In the definition phase the managers and the team should be very careful about the management techniques that are used. There is always a tendency to load the employees with instructions which may lead to confusion. Hence, the project manager has to select the management techniques which are simple to understand and easy to follow by the team members. There is also another danger of too much time getting wasted in groundwork and defining of the tasks. This is waste of time and money. Another major setback in the project management that can happen during the implementation stage is the irregular flow of information. Information flow may be restricted which reduces the morale and involvement of the team members or it can also be excessive which can create unrealistic estimations. Hence, the project manager should keep a control over the information flow so that correct information is available to the team players at the right time. CONCLUSION In project management, even the best laid plans do not work sometimes. The effectiveness of the plans made depends on their inherent ability to accommodate changes. When one plan fails, the project manager should not hesitate to try another plan fresh. The project manager with his managerial skills and traits should monitor the project team and measure potential deficiencies. He should audit the project on an ongoing basis. He should include all the members of the project in making decisions so that the involvement, commitment of the team members is high. When the team members have the desire for accomplishment, interest in the project the project is sure to success. The restraining forces such as uncertain roles, lack of technical knowledge, poor project control and personality problems should be carefully avoided from the planning stage for the successful project management. APPENDIX - 1 11 1 6 10 1 5 3 1 6 1 2 4 4 5 12 14 20 APPENDIX 2 Calculation of total float Activity Title Time(days) TE TL TF (TL - TE) 1-2 A 10 0 0 0 2-3 B 1 10 10 0 3-4 C 5 11 53 42 4-5 D 3 16 48 32 5-6 E 1 19 61 42 4-7 F 6 16 54 38 7-8 G 11 22 60 38 8-9 H 1 23 61 38 3-10 I 2 11 11 0 10-11 J 4 13 13 0 6-12 K 6 20 62 42 11-13 L 5 17 17 0 13-14 M 12 22 22 0 14-15 N 14 34 34 0 15-16 O 20 48 48 0 16-17 P 4 68 68 0 2-18 Q 25 10 47 37 17-19 R 1 72 72 0 REFERENCES 1. Kerzner, H ( 1992) Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling and controlling, 4th ed, New York, Van Nostrand Reinhold 2. Max, R.D and Nielander, W.A (1974) Readings in Management, 4th ed, Cincinnati, Southwestern publication 3. Dick, B.H and Max, G (1970) Project control standards, Princeton, Brandon system press. 4. Wadsworth, M (1972) EDP project management controls, New Jersy, Prentice Hall 5. Bennis, W (1984) the four competencies of leadership, Training and development journal, 38, pp 15-19 6. 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