The Achieving Project Goals Simulation - Essay Example

            After completing the Achieving Project Goals simulation I learned a lot of new things about project management that changed my perspective on the academic discipline. In the past, I thought that project management was an easy job that entailed delegating a lot of work and keeping track of the tasks the employees performed. This simulation made me realize that project management involves a lot of different things. A project manager must be a very organized person due to the fact that the project manager has lots of different responsibilities that he must track on a daily and weekly basis. One of the simplest concepts from project management that I learned that is very important for the functionality of a project is the fact that projects are tracked based on deliverables. The sequence of deliverables determines the project map.

 In the first round of the simulation, I had to create a sequence of deliverables needed to transport the elephants from Zaminaka National Park to Ungoba National Park. The exercise of creating a sequence of activities was an example of a work breakdown structure. I learned from the simulation that project managers have to adapt to situations based on circumstances and that minimizing risks is important in order to improve the possibility of successfully completing a project. Project managers must make decisions based on tradeoffs between time, cost, and performance. The simulation shows that despite all the planning unforeseen circumstances occur. A reality about the business world is that a lot of projects are going to fail. In the pharmaceutical industry, it takes approximately $800 million dollar to develop a new drug due to the cost of all the failed new drug projects the company has to absorb. The expenses that a company incurs in a failed project are considered sunk costs (Economist).

The use of work breakdown structures is an advantage of the application of project management. WBS enables the project manager to accurately track the time of completion of many deliverables. Even if a project has over 100 deliverables to be completed the correct implementation of a work breakdown structure will ensure that the project manager can manage the time and cost of the project effectively. A major limitation that was illustrated throughout the simulation was time. When a project gets delayed it causes a ripple effect that affects all future deliverables of a project. Time becomes more sensitive when dealing with the health of live creatures. It is the responsibility of mankind to protect the animal kingdom and endangered species. Another advantage of the use of project management is that it provides a flexible leadership structure that employees understand. The project manager is the person responsible for the project, but he depends on the self-discipline and leadership skills of all the team members. Project management also offers advantages to a corporation such as the ability to separate special projects away from the normal operations of the firm. A project manager can focus on the performance of a specific project without worrying about the implication the project has on the corporation as a whole.

A way to minimize the effects of bottlenecks on an operation is by performing adequate preparation. It is important to categorize the different types of bottlenecks. Seven types of bottlenecks are staffing, budget, people issues, client dependencies, vendor dependencies, task completion, and process dependencies (Sisco). Once bottlenecks are identified the project manager can develop contingency plans to deal with different scenarios based on each bottleneck category. All the alternative solutions to deal with different types of bottlenecks must be documented by the project manager.    

As a project manager if I was required to crunch a project and I had to select between sacrificing risks or time I would sacrifice the risk variable. Once a risk is identified even if a company incurs risky behavior there are ways to minimize the effects of the risk exposure on the company. For example, a project manager of a beach volleyball league during the rainy season could play games at indoor sand stadiums to prevent delays in the regular season schedule. The weather risk factor was a counterattack by having a contingency plan of an alternate playing field where rain could not affect the playing of the game. Time is a very sensitive variable that has to be taken very seriously. Imagine a construction project that is facing potential time delays. A time delay would prevent the governor to present the completion of the project prior to the upcoming elections. If the project is delayed the governor who invested $100 million in the project might not get the credit he needs to obtain reelection. The risk of time delays was offset by the project manager in this scenario by working a double shift during the last three months of construction work.