PROJECT MANAGEMENT - TASK 2 Summary - Essay Example

The roles of the team manager and those of the team tend to be different in each project, especially so in creative projects like this one. The current level of engagement with projects has fuelled concerns that Project Management (PM) is becoming an increasingly complex discipline. Lack of clarity is probably among the major causes why projects fail. This vagueness ultimately results in missed deadlines, confusion among team members and costs going way over the top. It was my job as team manager to confront and eliminate them.

The problems were partly due to an improper understanding of what projects were. A project is a series of tasks executed as part of a temporary undertaking to help create a service or product, which is unique in nature. The endeavour is temporary owing to the fact that the team members will disperse and then be involved in other projects. The time bound nature of the project made it very critical that we had no cost overruns and I had to have an ongoing perspective on the planning and implementation.

Any spillage of resources would have diluted the objective. This time around, I felt that the event we were involved with was vital in its outcome. The funds raised were to be directed for the construction of orphanages. Moreover, the project was our responsibility till the end. The connections to be made on the way were several in numbers making it necessary for us to be in control of the project from the beginning. Eventually these techniques, which I considered appropriate to the outcome, were accepted by a senior management team.

The idea was to smoothly control the three elements of tasks, resources, and time. (Turner, 2000)The following sections are a critical look at the tools used:Value Tree or Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)In discussions with team members, I noticed that WBS as a monitoring tool was not taken seriously enough by those entrusted with project execution. However, I can confidently claim now that WBS aligned with Value Tree has contributed tremendously to our recent fundraiser music show staged for a charity.

However, initially there were difficulties in perception and the following is a note on the progress to final adoption of this analytical process culminating in our huge success. (Stainton, 1999)The ProblemValue Management was perceived by my team to be peripheral to the core activity. The technique is actually employed in the early stages of a project so that preparations lead to the proper