Project Management And Being A Project Manager

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Now a day’s many people and organisation today have a totally new awareness in project management. In the past project management mostly focused on providing schedule and recourse data to top management in the military and construction industries. (Kathy Schwalbe, 2009)

Today project management involves lots more, and new technologies have become significant factor in project management.

To understand project management, It is important to understand what is Project, as per PMBOK, project is "a temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique, product, service or result. Where temporary means that every project has a defined end, Unique means that the product or service is different in some distinguishing way from all similar products or services."

Project sometimes overlap by operation but both are different, operation are ongoing and repetitive, while project are temporary and unique.

Every project is controlled in different ways by its scope, time and cost goals. These three boundaries are known as triple constraint of the project. As per this triple constraint Gray and Larson’s definition of project is looks more expressive,

"A Project is a complex, non-routine, one-time effort limited by time, budget, resources, and performance specifications designed to meet the customers’ needs." Gray/Larson

Project management

"is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet project requirement."(PMBOK Guide, 2003) Now a day’s Project management is not a special requirement it is becoming the way of managing business. Project management is the integration processes of initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and controlling and closing.

Project manager

Normally the project manager is a controller, who is responsible for completing the project. The project manager is also facilitate the people involved in or effected by project.

Project manager should also own management knowledge and skills. Management knowledge like financial management, sales, marketing, strategic planning and operations management. Skills like human relations or we can say soft skills like leadership, communication, problem solving and motivation. As a project manager positive leadership is plays very big and important role in project management.

Main body

the socio-cultural aspects of Project Management

People and their culture is an area that is common to all projects. Culture is also an area that has been identified as a cause of project failure (Dinsmore, 1984; Jaeger & Kanungo, 1990; Verma, 1995; Muriithi & Crawford, 2003). Since everyone brings culture to the project, the project manager needs to be aware of, and understand how culture can and will impact the project.

leadership

In project management leadership plays very significant role. Accepting a position as a project manager also means accepting the responsibilities of leader. Project’s success fector depends on project manager’s leadership. The study found effective project manager are good leaders, characteristic of effective project manager are lead by example, visionaries, technically competent, decisive, good communicators, and good motivators.

Positive leadership – The most important characteristics of positive leadership is being a team builder and communicator, having high self-esteem, focusing on results, demonstrating trust and respect and setting goals.

Leadership style

Autocratic leaders make decisions without consulting their teams.

Democratic leaders allow the team to provide input before making a decision, although the degree of input can vary from leader to leader.

Laissez-faire leaders don't interfere; they allow the team to make many of the decisions.

Bureaucratic leaders work "by the book." They follow rules rigorously, and ensure that their staff follows procedures precisely.

A charismatic leadership style can seem similar to transformational leadership, because these leaders inspire lots of enthusiasm in their teams and are very energetic in driving others forward. However, charismatic leaders can tend to believe more in themselves than in their teams, and this creates a risk that a project, or even an entire organization, might collapse if the leader leaves.

With people-oriented leadership, leaders are totally focused on organizing, supporting, and developing the people in their teams.

 When someone, at any level within an organization, leads simply by meeting the needs of the team, he or she is described as a "servant leader."

Highly task-oriented leaders focus only on getting the job done, and they can be quite autocratic.

Transactional leadership is really a type of management, not a true leadership style, because the focus is on short-term tasks. It has serious limitations for knowledge-based or creative work.

Transformational leadership as we discussed earlier, people with this leadership style are true leaders who inspire their teams constantly with a shared vision of the future.

 in many organizations, both transactional and transformational leadership are needed. The transactional leaders (or managers) ensure that routine work is done reliably, while the transformational leaders look after initiatives that add value.

Leader Vs Manager

Usually leadership and management terms are often used similar, there is a big different between them.

The leader focuses on ling term goals and objectives and inspires people to reach those goals.

The manager mostly deals with day to day details in terms of meeting specific goals.

"Managers do thing right, Leaders do right things."

"Leaders determined the vision and managers achieve the vision."

However, project managers need to perform both roles leader and manager. Project manger

"Project managers bear ultimate responsibility for making things happen. Traditionally, they have carried out this role as simple implementers. To do their jobs they needed to have basic administrative and technical competencies. Today they play a far broader role. In addition to the traditional skills, they need to have business skills, customer relations skills, and political skills. Psychologically, they must be results-oriented self-starters with a high tolerance for ambiguity, because little is clear-cut in today's tumultuous business environment. Shortcomings in any of these areas can lead to project failure." - J. Davidson Frame

Leadership style

Autocratic –

â—¦these managers solicit little or no informational input from the group and would rather make the decision by themselves.

Consultative Autocratic –

â—¦this is intensive information gathering obtained from the group by the manager, but the manager keeps the decision making to himself/herself.

Consensus Manager –

â—¦this type of manger throws open the problem to the group for discussion and simultaneously allows or encourages the team to make the relevant decision.

Shareholder Manager –

â—¦little or no information input and exchange takes place within the group, while the group itself has the ultimate authority to make the decision.

Managing stakeholder

Project life cycle

initiation

be a servant leader- project manager is often asked to explore what is possible and to define a high level plan with an indication of project cost. This is very much about making a contribution by meeting other’s need and removing there barriers.

Planig

Take ownership and a task orientation towards project planning. Engage key stakeholders in a democratic, participative style. Identify the right people for the right role. Bureaucratically establish the project control mechanisms and the standards for the project team.

Execution

Manage effective meetings and focus on people-orientation to ensure that awareness, engagement and positive support is built with a wider set of stakeholders.

Consult with others as needed for decision making using autocratic or democratic approaches as needed.

Understand the impact of changes and lead by example with a clear view of the transformation required and engage people with that vision.

Closure

Focus on task orientation and leaving the project team to get things done.

Ensure that multiple tasks, priorities and risks are effectively managed and clearly communicated.

Take bureaucratic approach to preparation for testing, deployment and closure,

Doing each stage properly- producing the appropriate deliverables at the desired level of quality.

phasic of life cycle

Critical analicis

Canclusan

Clifford f. Grey (2008) Project Management the Managerial Process 4e. McGraw Hill

Field, M., Keller, L. (1998) Project Management. Open University

PMBOK (Multiple web references)

Young-Hoon Kwak (2005). "A brief history of Project Management". In: The story of managing projects. Elias G. Carayannis et al. (9 eds), Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005.