Project Management (ENG) — Ünite 5 Soru-Cevap

A PM is the person who leads a project from its phases of initiation to closure in the project life cycle. This also includes the planning, managing people and resources, and performing of the project.

A project manager must possess disparate set of skills such as management of conflict, team and risk change, leadership, technical problem solving, and customer relationship. These skills could be extended, but the main point is: “The PM is the one who gets the jobs done!”.

• A strong technical background

• A hard-nosed manager

• A mature individual

• Someone who is currently available

• Powerful communication skills
• Proficient technical skills
• Managing resources
• Good decision-maker
• Managing Risk
• Perfect visionary
• Negotiating skills
• Team building
• Leadership

Although the PM is novice or experienced, he/she must inspect many functional areas, each with its own experts. Hence, the PM who uses systems approach, should be more skilled at synthesis.

The PM has many responsibilities but they are primarily divided into three separate groups:

• The responsibility to the main company includes the appropriate care of resources, convenient and correct project communications, adequate and apprehensive project management.

• The responsibility to the project and the customer is fulfilled by ensuring that the integrity of the project is maintained despite the contradictory demands of many parties with legitimate interests.

  • The responsibility to the project team is determined by the finite nature of the project and the expertise structure of the team. Because the project is, by definition, a temporary entity and must come to an end, the PM must be concerned with the future of the people who serve on the team.

Those who will be project managers for the first time are very ambitious to implement their own ideas and manage their team so that they can complete the projects successfully. What they soon learn is that the success of the project depends on the cooperation of a wide range of individuals, many of whom do not report directly. Many of the PMs find themselves spending much of their time with negotiating and working with consultants, technical specialist, and other managers instead of working with their team to complete the project. Thus, the customer is the most important project stakeholder that influences the success of the project depending on its nature.

A stakeholder is an individual, group, or organization that may affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected by a decision, activity, or outcome of a project.

Although there are many definitions of leadership, Summerfield studied and came up with eight suitable and simple definitions. Some of the definitions expressed the concept by what leaders do while others by what leadership is.

To summarize these definitions in terms of project management, leadership is the process by which PM influences the project team to get the job done!

Project managers focus more on administrative skills while leaders bring emotional intelligence to the forefront for the achievement of project success.

Larson and Gray denoted that management is about coping with complexity, while leadership is about coping with change.

• Do things right
• Maintain the status quo
• Administer
• Imitate
• State their position
• Demand respect
• Focus on systems
• Strive for control
• Focused on the bottom line
• Short-term view

The idea of leadership as a partnership is crucial for project management because it emphasizes the importance of all leaders ultimately dependent on their teams to achieve their project objectives.

• Exchange of purpose
• A right to say no
• Joint accountability
• Absolute honesty

A project team consists of a group of people who have come together to carry out activities that contribute to achieving the goal of a common task.

A project team consists of team members from different departments of an organization, thus most project teams can be classified as cross-functional teams.

A person in an organization can be assigned as a PM by chance; however, project teams do not happen by chance. As soon as a PM is assigned to conduct a project, he/she should start building up a team.

• Providing effort to the whole project to meet the objectives

• Completing individual products of the project such as reports, models, designs, plans, etc. by the due date

• Delivering expertise

• Working with users to identify and meet business requirements

• Reporting status updates to PM

• Establishing records of project including the documents

• Attending and active participation in the meetings

• Ensuring the tasks to be completed on time

• Performing assigned activities

These five stages are forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning.

If a PM is bringing the team members together for the upcoming project, it is essential that she/he know the attributes of an effective project team.