Managing And Coordinating Work

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

In almost every aspect of information system (IS) development, project management is becoming crucial in the deliverance of an efficient and dependable system which can fulfill the demanded requirements. "Focus of project management is to ensure that systems development projects meet customer expectations and are delivered within budget and time constraints." (Hoffer, 2008) This can be interpreted to mean; managing project development involves controlling and utilizing resources to produce/develop a product that can perform or function to fulfill a predetermined requirement in a predetermined time and budget.

A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service. (virtualitinc, 2013). Every project has a well-defined objective, it is also temporary has a definite beginning and a definite end it requires resources people, hardware, software, and other assets primary customer, sponsor or stakeholders the project sponsor usually provides the direction and funding for the project, and project involves uncertainty every project is unique.

In Maybank projects are monitored and supervised by a project manager who is appointed by the company and in some cases recruited to join the company for a specific project. A project manager is a person responsible for accomplishing the project objectives in order to produce the required product at the required time and budget. Based on a job description from themaybank2u.compostedon; (Maybank, 2012) a maybank project manager is required to perform the following tasks: a project manager will manage and supervise a team of developers, and communicate with vendors and internal user on system enhancement, track and ensure timely delivery of solutions. A project manager will also provide timely and accurate reports on IT project progress status and assist in resource planning.

The roles of a project manager (Field, M. and Keller, L, 1998)

Estimating and planning:

A project manager has to gather information about what needs to be done and how it should be executed; what will be the cost (resources allocation) and duration (scheduling); and then analyze the functionalities that can be achieved based on the resources they have. e.g. different tasks, skills and other resources. A project manager is also responsible for conducting risk analysis and risk management to make sure that the project does not fail and can recover in case of a failure. Furthermore, the project manger's role is to plan on how to satisfy the client; through reaching their requirements and keeping them updated. The project manager is also responsible in assigning tasks to the work force. This results to a project plan and a budget.

Building and leading the team:

A project team is crucial in the success of a project. In many occasions, the project manager has little control in the selection of the workforce in the project because the project team is assembled based on the highest skilled personnel that is available and not assigned to other tasks. However, the project manager requires skills of assembling people and making them into a team-motivating, managing conflict amongst them and ensuring that they communicate well.

Reporting and liaising:

The project manager is the representative for the project; he/she acts like a bridge between the senior management, clients, stakeholders, shareholders, and even suppliers in most cases.

Putting tools in place (Methodology):

There are a number of standardized tools that exist to help manage, control, estimate and report projects. It is the manager’s responsibility to select, monitor, and ensure that the appropriate tools for the job are accessible.

Managing and coordinating work:

Once the project has commenced, the project manager's job is to manage the work that is done and to co-ordinate the effort from various team members and different bodies within the organization to attain the project's objectives.

Managing changes:

It is very rare that projects end exactly as they were initially planned. A lot of problems arise during various phases of the project development that require changes to plans. These problems can be short-term or long-term. The users or clients may change their requirements; the regulatory, legislative or financial environmental condition in which the project operates may change during the execution of the project. Therefore, the manager's role is to institute in a formal manner, estimate and carry out sanctioned changes.

Maybank projects

Data Warehouse Project

In 2002 Maybank signed a partnership agreement costing over RM6 million with Oracle Corporation Malaysia that will enhance Maybank Group's data warehouse project to provide strategic business intelligence for business needs as well as improve high value customer relationship and services.

"This data warehouse project with Oracle is part of an overall new business strategy of transforming the Group into a higher level customer-centric organization. Oracle will assist in developing applications that will generate customer's profitability models. The strategic business intelligence applications when rolled out in six months’ time will enable us to establish a unique profile identification of each individual customer. Such information will assist the Group to understand our customer's relationship with us and their risk profile conveniently and speedily. Accurate analysis of our customer's profile will assist us to formulate appropriate marketing and pricing strategies for our customers," said Ms Hooi Lai Hoong, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Maybank at the time.

The data warehouse project provides important business intelligence information of Maybank customers to enable them to strategize their marketing, sales and service programs and target specific financial solutions as well as offer a spectrum of products or services that cater to customer's needs or profile respectively. Improvement in risk management will also protect stakeholders as well as customers' value and interest as Maybank will be able to manage risks and minimize adverse impacts of a crisis. With better and quicker access to required information, their staff will be empowered with better decision making in their relationship with customers. (Data Warehouse Project, 2002)

Managing the Project’s Development

Even though the project belongs to Maybank the tasks were outsourced to Oracle because they had a better development team and resources. This shows how much planning goes into a project because the project manager for this system analyzed the objective and realized that Oracle being an expert in this field would do a better job of producing a system. This shows that the project manager has adapted to working for the interest of the company and providing the customers with the best possible option.

Estimating and planning

Before establishment of any project it’s a good ideas to conduct an intensive research of any IT related project and estimating on how much the project will cost in order to get winder understanding of the project planning on how much time will be needed to complete the project to the final stage of implementation.

Budget estimation

Data Warehouse Project, which is on among the largest project maybank have done and the estimation cost over RM6 million.

2.

Summary

The detailed plan or stages of project development does not guarantee the successful of a particular project although there are some parameters need to be considered by a project manager such as; ( Project Handbook, 2001)

Time: The time factor manifests itself in a project in the form of deadlines for tasks and the amount of time that these tasks may take.as I observe from the above project time plays a major role.

Money: The money factor manifests itself in the project budget. The management of money within a project involves ensuring that the costs remain within the budget. Given that the majority of the costs in most projects are comprised of labor costs, the factors of money and time.

Quality: These requirements should never remain hidden. A clear list of requirements can be checked at the end of the implementation phase. This can allow the project team to prove that they have carried out the project according to specifications. Additional quality requirements may be specified for different tasks within the project. A good and clear example can be a particular task which must carried out only by experienced personnel.

Organization: Within a project, the team must be well managed. In the narrowest sense, team management involves determining who will do what from the list of activities. In broader terms, it also involves all of the soft skills such as motivational techniques, communication skills, leadership styles these are some of the extra skills which will be needed to achieve the project’s goals. Regardless of their importance, these soft skills exceed the scope of this handbook.

Information: The information factor concerns how, by whom and on which basis decisions can be taken. Who may decide about which matters in the project? Is it the project manager, the client or a substantive expert within the team? What will be archived and by whom? Those questions will be valuable for obtaining more information on the project and for handling information within a project.

Conclusion

Most big and worth mentioning project by Maybank are outsourced which makes information gathering on projects a bit tricky. Also due to the sensitive nature of the information in the banking industry however, as stated earlier, a good project has a start date and end date. The project is estimated to be completed within the next period of time given that it’s a year or more than a year. Maybank needs to improve in terms of their planning (developing the schedule) because without a fixed date and due-dates, the project may take longer than they expected because there is no time constraint.

Moreover, the latest financial release did not state where the project is in terms of cost on each of the part. It only contained information of how many branches the new system has been implemented in and the success. Reporting should not only be limited to the number of branches they have implemented the system in. The Group should work on producing reports that indicate how much has been spent and where they are in the time scale.