Project Management Conditions - Essay Example

The objective of this project is to deliver tacos and burritos at factories through a mobile lunch truck. The project is intrinsically related to the social and cultural environments prevalent in the region. People have a liking for tacos and burritos. Owing to their busy schedule, many people find it convenient to consume ready-made food because it saves the time otherwise consumed in cooking the food at home, and because it tastes great. The immense reliance of people on ready-made food over the years has become a norm in the region, thus making the consumption of such items as tacos and burritos integrated into the culture. The project has a contribution to the national gross domestic product (GDP). The government imposes taxes on the sale of tacos and burritos. Also, the profits made are reinvested in the same country which has a positive impact on the country’s economy. The project might have adverse effects on the physical environment if measures are not taken to prevent the factories from discharging the waste appropriately and the consumers from throwing the wrappers and boxes in the open.

General management of the project requires planning, organizing, staffing, execution and control of the project operations. This is achieved with the help of different process groups including the initial, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing process groups (Stackpole, 2010, p. 2-3). Planning includes the selection of the way to execute the project from among various options. Planning of the project starts with the arrangement of the mobile truck which would be used to carry the tacos and burritos to the factories. There are two main options for the executor of the project; either the executor can rent the mobile truck or he/she can buy it. The decision of renting vs. buying the mobile truck depends to a large extent upon the length of time for which it is needed. If the mobile truck has to serve tacos and burritos at factories regularly, the executor should buy it rather than rent it. On the other hand, if the project has to be executed only for some days, it is better to rent the truck rather than buy it. Buying proves more economical than renting in the long run, so care must be exercised in assessing the cost of renting vs. buying the mobile truck for the project. After this decision has been made, the next step is to decide where the tacos and burritos would be attained to get them served at the factories. The mobile lunch truck may either purchase the tacos and burritos from vendors at a lower price or purchase the ingredients and cook tacos and burritos in the truck, whichever is more cost-effective. The project manager can either keep personal staff to cook the snacks from the raw ingredients or else, subcontract the work. If the executor decides to staff the cooks, it needs to be decided whether to make them part of the permanent workforce or hire the cooks on a per-day basis. In this case, it is advisable to keep permanent staff so that the quality of snacks remains the same every day. After this, the manager needs to organize the project in which, different departments would be assigned the required resources. The area inside the truck would be divided into various departments, making room for the storage of equipment and ingredients. Then the manager would staff the cooks, the driver, and other members including the accountants according to the planning that preceded it. The manager needs to provide the organizational personnel with an adequate supply of resources so that the project may be executed as planned. Measures would be taken to develop teamwork among the organizational personnel and to make sure that the snacks produced are of the required quality (Project Management Institute, 2000, p. 35). The manager controls the project by arranging meetings as often as required wherein the project participants can be updated on the progress of work and strategies for the future can be developed with mutual consensus and conveyed across different departments.

“Interpersonal Skills are the skills we use to interact or deal with others” (Working Voices, 2012). The interpersonal skills needed to manage the project fundamentally include being able to gain the consent of everybody involved in it to get their respective tasks accomplished promptly. In the case under consideration, the lunch truck is essentially the project management office that contains various departments whose function is to cook tacos and burritos from raw ingredients and sell them to the factories. The various departments of the project management office include the finance department, the purchasing department, the cooking department, the marketing department, and the driving department. All these departments have to work with mutual consensus and mutual harmony to be able to make a profit from their business. Interpersonal skills needed include teamwork and effective communication between and flow of information from one department to another. Read More