Research on Project Management - Essay Example

Project Management Essay By Institute Up till now, a large number of researches have been carried out to demonstrate the relationship between people management and project management. The majority of researches conclude that project management is actually people management because a project involves a variety of stakeholders (people) who interact with one another all the way through the project lifecycle. In fact, a project involves a variety of stakeholders such as project managers, top managers, customers and others. In this scenario, the success of a project completely depends on people and people management (Lock & Scott, 2013; Kerzner, 2009). The basic purpose of this essay is to evaluate the importance of people management as part of project management. This essay will discuss a few examples of the projects that fail due to mismanagement of people. The key to completing projects successfully, surely, is people. In the entire project lifecycle from start till end all the activities are employable processes. For instance, defining project requirements, well stated deliverables and predicted results, project evaluation, risk management and control, project management tools, methodologies and completeness of documentation depend completely on the project team (Somani, 2014; Lock & Scott, 2013). Without a doubt, as a human being, a person performs a wide variety of roles in their daily life. For instance, they perform the role of a worker, a husband/wife, child/parent, friend, or boss. In this scenario, the success of a person in each role depends on another’s perceptions and expectations of their presentation, behaviour and attitude. On the other hand, these people are evaluated on the basis of previous expectations and learning of what establishes accomplishment of that role from their personal viewpoint. In this scenario, effective communication can help people learn each other in a much better way. They can understand the behavior of people in certain conditions, which can help build an effective relationship among people. In addition, all the phases of a project are executed by people (team members), so the success or failure of a project heavily depends on these people (Somani, 2014; Lock & Scott, 2013). In an article, Mayes (2014) discusses examples of two huge but failed projects. In fact, these projects are believed to be the huge failures. In this scenario, the first example is the £12.4 billion National Programme for IT (NPfiT) project. This project was initiated to improve the healthcare services and patient care, while the other example is Firecontrol (a £469 million project). This project was initiated to make changes to the control room functionalities of 46 local Fire and Rescue Services in England. Additionally, this project involved the implementation of a network for nine purpose built regional control centres by making use of a national computer system. Though, a large number of articles have been published to criticize the failure of NPfIT, however the project Firecontrol has not attained considerable attention from critics. In fact, it was an even worse case of project management failure. Actually, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has also acknowledged it as “one of the worst cases of project failure that the committee has noticed in many years.” Basically, the problems that this project experienced were usual that occur during any project lifecycle such as a series of delays and problems prior to its termination in December 2010. However, until the termination of this project none of the goals were attained as well as this project caused wastage of a minimum of £469 million. Without a doubt, there can be a variety of issues that caused the failure of these projects, but the majority of researchers identified the failure of people management in project management as a key reason of these project failures. Moreover, more and more IT projects fail due to non-technical reasons. The management underestimates the human aspect of project management and they keep focusing on technical aspects of projects such as technology or infrastructure. Recently, the Association of Project Managers (APM) Conference demonstrated only the less than 25% of all projects attain the project objectives established in the beginning. According to Mayes (2014), a project is completed by people, and the success can be achieved only by making sure that they are trained and educated to deal with project complexities. In fact, education and training are necessary for every person working in the organisation, whether he or she is a team member or a project manager (Mayes, 2014): People management is believed to be a critical aspect of project management and a project cannot be successful without the effective management of people who are associated with the project by any mean. According to DeMarco and Lister (1999), the development of accounts receivable and payable software is a very simple task for the reason that since the emergence of computers, there must have been tens of thousands of accounts payable and receivable software tools developed. In fact, the development of accounts payable and receivable programmes is believed to be an easy task for the programmers and there should be no mistake in the development of these programs. Even though, some of these projects go wrong and fail. In this scenario, a project that does not require any technical innovation is going down the tubes. Actually, accounts payable and receivable are a wheel that is reinvented so many times that the majority of software developers could complete these with their eyes closed. However, these projects sometimes still manage to fail. In order to determine the reasons of project failures each year since 1977, DeMarco and Lister (1999) performed an analysis on development projects and their outcomes. They calculated various features of projects such as project cost, size, defects/errors, acceleration factors, and failure or success in meeting schedules. They have now successfully collected more than five hundred project histories. All of these projects came from real-world development efforts. The results of their studies demonstrate that almost 15% of the projects were aborted or canceled or postponed, or they transported products that were useless to the end-user. Additionally, for the irresistible majority of the bankrupt projects they analyzed, ‘there was not a single technological or technical problem to depict the failure’ (DeMarco & Lister, 1999, p.5). The majority of participants who took part in the survey cited the politics as the cause of failure. Basically, politics involves people related aspects such as staffing problems, communication problems, and dissatisfaction with the client or with the boss, high turnover, and lack of motivation. According to DeMarco and Lister (1999), the word “politics” is commonly used to define any aspect of the work that is related to people, however a much more accurate term for these effects can be the projects sociology. In fact, the actual political issues are a pathological and a small subset of project sociology. No matter, how these people related problems are acknowledged, but they can cause more serious troubles than all the design, programming/ implementation, and process issues a project team or organization has to take care of. In addition, organizations should start believing that the major issues and problems of their projects are not so much technological as sociological in nature. Most of the studies have shown that a large number of project managers are eager to acknowledge the idea that they have got more people related issues than technical issues. However, they rarely take it seriously or manage that way. On the other hand, they always manage as though technology was their key concern. Additionally, the majority of project managers spend their time puzzling over the interesting and complicated problems that their people will have to resolve, almost as though they themselves were going to carry out the tasks instead of manage it. They are always in search of a technical solution that is aimed automating the part of the work. In this scenario, little technical aspects are given highest priority on the other hand the most strongly people-oriented functions of their concern are frequently given the lowermost priority. According to DeMarco and Lister (1999), the cause of this thinking is the education background of these project managers because these managers are educated in how the job is completed, not how the job is managed. On the other hand, there are only a few organizations in which project managers have done anything that explicitly refers to a capability or a skill for management. In the same way, the majority of project managers have got little management experience and no significant practice. Project management is all about managing people so project managers should be educated and trained in an environment that is more focused towards management than technology (DeMarco & Lister, 1999, pp. 4-7; Cornelius, 2006). In a paper, Crawford and Price (1996) present a detailed discussion on people’s performance with respect to certain factors. In this scenario, a key conceptual framework that supports the project team performance is the concept of completeness of approach, which is shown in fig1 (as the McKinsey 7-S Framework). The research has shown that the continuous growth and improvement of project team performance could be supported through the interactive and efficient usage of a dedicated quality management system. In this scenario, the McKinsey 7-S Framework regarding the project team performance provides seven dimensions of an organization that relate to the project teams. This framework contains all the major aspects that are necessary to determine the overall performance of project teams (Crawford & Price, 1996): Figure 1- McKinsey 7-S Framework In the figure1, shared values refer to the guiding principles that are commonly shared by the employees of an organization. In addition, this is a significant checklist intended for organizational change handling and performance. In case of project team performance enhancement and completing the project tasks companies can face some of the critical issues those would be causes of project failure (Crawford & Price, 1996). According to (Malczyk, 2014), all the tasks of a project are executed by people who are specifically selected on the basis of their knowledge skills, and potential to pay out for the final result. However, a project manager is responsible for leading the team. Hence, the project manager is believed to be the driving force behind the team (Malczyk, 2014). People management is believed to be more challenging and complicated than technology management for the reason that people can have different attributes such as their abilities and skills to communicate efficiently on personal levels, apply a system that classifies personal differences, wear different leadership hats, stimulate teams and individuals, effectively manage conflict, manage and mediate professional and personal stress, and become active in ongoing career management. Though, project managers can get knowledge about these attributes by reading a book or guide, but the best way to learn this can be an experiential environment in which one can practically implement the knowledge in real time. In this scenario, organizations can offer a variety of sources to their employees for gaining this knowledge. For instance, they can establish an experimental environment that can encompass various formal or informal venues, like that workshops, casual social settings, or executive coaching (Flannes, 2010; Longman & Mullins, 2004). In the past few years with the developments in technology, there have emerged various new forms of people management. In this scenario, the concept of a virtual team is not a new idea since it has been used for a long time to complete various kinds of projects. However, with the rapid expansion of virtual teams, the effect of cross cultural aspects, and the rearrangement of models showing how projects are completed within organizational environments. The majority of researchers now believe that now technical professionals cannot be successful with just their technical skills and experience (if they ever could). In addition, the successful technology experts of today and tomorrow possesses a combination of technical knowledge and people skills. Hence, at the present it’s the effective management of people that matters and will progressively govern an organization’s success (Flannes, 2010; Longman & Mullins, 2004). Throughout the project lifecycle project managers pay their attention to three aspects: cost, quality and schedule. In fact, they treated all other aspects as inferior. However, this approach of project management has not proven too fruitful for any of the three criteria. They always missed one of the most important criteria and that is people. In this scenario, the majority of project managers fail to recognize that their way of handling people affects budget, schedule and quality, and hence the outcome of their projects. The research has shown that an effective people management approach can bridge the gap between the other three criteria. For instance, an encouraged team member will work more effectively as well as even longer with the intention of keeping a schedule. In addition, he will be interested in producing effective results and as a result the task will be completed with high quality (Krautwurst, 1994). In conclusion, a project is a temporary activity which is initiated to achieve some goals. Throughout the project lifecycle all the tasks are performed by people. Hence, the successful people management is critical for the successful project management. In addition, people management is more complicated and requires additional management skills because people possess so many different characteristics and skills. Even a simple project fails when a project manager fails to manage people effectively. A project manager should possess both managerial and technical skills for the effective project management. References Cornelius, E. T., 2006. What to Do When People Problems Threaten Project Success – Part 1, s.l.: Collegiate Project Services. Crawford, L. & Price, P., 1996. Project Team Performance: A Continous Improvement Methodology. In IPMA 96” World Congress on Project Management. Paris, France, 1996. DeMarco, T. & Lister, T., 1999. Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams. 2nd ed. New York: Dorset House Publishing Co.. Flannes, S., 2010. Effective People Skills for the Project Manager: A Requirement for Project Success and Career Advancement. Oakland, CA USA, SUGI. Kerzner, H. R., 2009. Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling. New York: Wiley. Krautwurst, S., 1994. The People Side of Project Management, s.l.: DCOM. Lock, D. & Scott, L., 2013. Gower Handbook of People in Project Management. s.l.:Gower. Longman, A. & Mullins, J., 2004. Project management: key tool for implementing strategy. Journal of Business Strategy, 25(5), pp. 54-60. Malczyk, A., 2014. The importance of project management. [Online] Available at: http://www.bbrief.co.za/resources/articles/the-importance-of-project-management [Accessed 22 February 2014]. Mayes, C., 2014. Project management: People make projects. [Online] Available at: http://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/People-make-projects [Accessed 22 February 2014]. Somani, S., 2014. Project Management = People Management. [Online] Available at: http://www.mannaz.com/en/insights/project-management-people-management-2/ [Accessed 26 February 2014]. Read More