Previous Share Flag Next. Project Management Fundamentals with Broad Applications In its Fourth Edition, Project Management: Achieving Competitive Advantage takes a contemporary, decisive, and business-oriented approach to teaching and learning project management. Blending current theory, contemporary case studies, and hands-on practice and research, Project Management offers students a full range of perspectives of the project management process. To promote a comprehensive, multi-industry understanding of the text, the author addresses project management theory within the context of a variety of successful organizations, whether they be publicly held, private, or nonprofit.
Comprehensive case analysis and detailed exercises give students the tools to assess projects in real-time, equipping them with razor-sharp decision-making skills. It is thus a constantly perfected and always perfectible state or condition whose progress will depend upon a variety of political, social, economic and cultural factors. This website hosts several cultural assessment and analysis tools, designed to support you, your team and your organisation in creating cultural advantage.
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Just click on a particular tool for more information. Key stakeholders in a software upgrade would include suppliers, competitors, project team members, top and functional management, and clients. Suppliers of the software would be influential in success implementation and maintenance of the system.
In the event of a failure, competitors would not only possibly gain new business, but may also learn from the shortcomings of the project and avoid such mistakes for themselves. Project team members would have direct impact on the success of the upgrade and as such would also stand to reap benefits or detriments from the outcome. Top management may be evaluated on the outcome of the project and may feel significant pressure to see that the project is a success.
Ultimately, clients would stand to gain from a successful implementation in the areas of faster transactions or better service, etc. As part of its operational shift, it is going to adopt a project management office somewhere within the organization.
Make an argument for the type of PMO it should adopt weather station, control tower, or resource pool. What are some key decision criteria that will help it determine which model makes most sense?
The company should adopt a control tower PMO. Since widespread project management is new to the organizational structure, the control tower will offer it the necessary monitoring sets standards and maintenance improvements and problem solving for a successful transition into a project organization. It will provide support for employees and will help to focus on improvement and problem solving as the company works through the stages of implementing project management.
When determining which model is best for the organization, it is important to consider the structure and size of the current organization, the role of projects within the company, resources available to the PMO, and the chain of command. The key elements that affect a supportive organizational culture are departmental interaction, employee commitment, project planning, and performance evaluation systems. Departmental interaction can create supportive relationships between functional and project managers.
It promotes information sharing and increasing likelihood of project success. Employee commitment to goals is important in keeping workers motivated. When employees feel personally committed to company goals, they will work harder and possibly longer , which leads to success. When planning out resource constraints for a project, it is important to create trust and understanding among managers and employees. Managers are often responsible for approving use of resources from their department and also consult on time requirements for specific tasks.
If managers are made an active part of the planning process, they are more willing to allocate resources and give accurate forecasts of time. Workers also need to feel as though they will not be punished if time frames are not met as long as this is not a persistent problem , otherwise they or their managers may exaggerate the forecasted amount of time to complete a task.
Finally, a performance evaluation criterion needs to encourage initiative and risk taking in a project environment. Additionally, rewards need to be consistent with the goals of the project. A functional organization that desires to move from an adversarial culture to a supportive, interactive one needs to consider several factors. First, the company should begin by establishing a corporate-wide vision that aims at uniting and motivating workers.
Lastly, they will need to establish unambiguous policies on short lines of authority and communication. This will help provide fast and efficient decision-making. You have historically been using a functional structure set up with five departments: finance, human resources, marketing, production, and engineering. Create a drawing of your simplified functional structure, identifying the five departments. Assume you have decided to move to a project structure.
What might be some of the environmental pressures that would contribute to your belief that it is necessary to alter the structure? With the project structure, you have four ongoing projects: stereo equipment, instrumentation and testing equipment, optical scanners, and defense communications. Draw the new structure that creates these four projects as part of the organizational chart. Pressure may come from within the organization or from environmental or external sources.
There may be pressure to be innovative or pressure from a rapidly changing market. Increased consumer demands or competition also put strain on a functional organization. These factors require quick response time, high innovation, speedy development, and risk-taking. Functional organizations may have difficulty meeting these needs, but project management can meet them by decreasing the chain of command and decision-making.
Re-create the structural design to show how the matrix would look. What behavioral problems could you begin to anticipate through this design? That is, do you see any potential points of friction in the dual hierarchy setup? Then, the student could indicate a couple of examples of projects e. The key is for students to recognize the joint responsibility for project staffing between the project manager and the functional manager.
One of the best responses here is recognizing that the balancing of resources between functional department and project will require negotiation and bargaining between the project manager and the functional department head. As the textbook notes, matrix is a constant source of friction between department heads, who want to keep their resources working on their own tasks, and project managers, who are seeking to gain access to these resources to support projects.
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