Project management a managerial approach chapter 03

Responsibilities of a PM• Responsibility to the Parent Organization • Responsibility to the Client • Responsibility to the Team Members • Above all, the PM must never allow senior manage

Project Management: A

Managerial Approach

Chapter 3 – The Project Manager

Project Management and the Project

Manager

• The Functional Manager vs The Project Manager

– Functional managers are usually specialists, analytically

oriented and they know the details of each operation for which they are responsible

– Project managers must be generalists that can oversee many functional areas and have the ability to put the pieces of a task together to form a coherent whole

Functional Manager and the PM

• The Functional Manager

– Analytical Approach

– Direct, technical supervisor

• The Project Manager

– Systems Approach

– Facilitator and generalist

Organizations and Functional Manager

• The Functional Manager

Project Management and the PM

• The PM

Project Management and the PM

• Major questions face the PM:

– 1 What needs to be done?

– 2 When must it be done?

– 3 How are the resources required to do this job

going to be obtained?

• PM is responsible for organizing, staffing, budgeting, directing, planning, and controlling the project.

Responsibilities of a PM

• Responsibility to the Parent Organization

• Responsibility to the Client

• Responsibility to the Team Members

• Above all, the PM must never allow senior management to be surprised—be prepared to give “bad news”

Responsibilities to the Parent

Organization

• Conservation of resources

• Timely and accurate project communications

• Careful, competent management of the project

• Protect the firm from high risk

• Accurate reporting of project status with

regard to budget and schedule

Responsibilities of the PM

• Responsibility to the Client

– Preserve integrity of project and client

– Resolve conflict among interested parties

– Ensure performance, budgets, and deadlines are met

• Responsibility to project team members

– Fairness, consistency, respect, honesty

– Concern for members’ future after project

Project Management Career Paths

• Most Project Managers get their training in one

or more of three ways:

– On-the-job

– Project management seminars and workshops

– Active participation in the programs of the local chapters of

the Project Management Institute

– Formal education in degree/certificate programs

Project Management Experience

• Experience as a PM serves to teach the importance of:

– An organized plan for reaching an objective

– Negotiation with one’s co-workers

– Follow through

– Sensitivity to the political realities of organizational life

• Careers often starts with participation in small into larger projects, until given control over small, then larger projects

Special Demands on the PM

• A number of demands are critical to the management

of projects:

– Acquiring sufficient resources

– Acquiring and inspiring personnel

• Finding sources of internal motivation– Dealing with obstacles

– Making project goal trade offs

– Dealing with risk and failure (perceived or otherwise)

– Maintaining multiple channels of communication

– Negotiation

Acquiring Sufficient Resources

• Resources initially budgeted for projects are frequently inadequate

– Sometimes resource trade-offs are required

Acquiring and Inspiring Personnel

• A major problem for the PM is that most people required for a project must be “borrowed”

– At times, functional managers may become jealous if they

perceive a project as more glamorous than their own functional area

– Typically, the functional manager retains control of personnel evaluation, salary, and promotion for those people lent out to

projects

– Because the functional manager controls pay and promotion, the

PM cannot promise much beyond the challenge of the work

Attracting the “Best” Team

• Characteristics of effective team members:

– High quality technical skills

– Political sensitivity

– Strong problem orientation

– Strong goal orientation

– High self-esteem

Dealing with Obstacles

• One characteristic of any project is its uniqueness and with that come a series of crises:

– At the inception of a project, the “fires” tend to be associated with resources

– As a project nears completion, obstacles tend to be clustered around two key issues:

• Last minute schedule and technical changes

• Uncertainty surrounding what happens to members

of the project team when the project is completed

Making Project Goal Trade-offs

• The PM must make trade offs between the project goals of cost, time and performance

– During the design or formation stage of the project life cycle, there is no significant difference in the importance PM’s place

on the three goals

– Schedule is the primary goal during the build up stage, being more important than performance, which is in turn significantly more important than cost

– During the final stage, phaseout, performance is significantly more important than cost

Making Project Goal Trade-offs

• Relative importance of project objectives for each stage of the project life cycle:

Failure, the Risk of Fear, and Failure

• It is difficult, at times, to distinguish between

project failure, partial failure, and success.

– What appears to be a failure at one point in the life of a project may look like a success at another

– Perception is reality—PMs need to control perceptions

– Communication is key to minimize impact of most “failures”

• Accountability never transfers from PM

Failure and Project Types - 1

• Two general types of projects:

– Type 1 - these projects are generally well-understood, routine construction projects

• Appear simple at the beginning of the project

• Rarely fail because they are late or over budget, though commonly are both

• They fail because they are not organized to handle unexpected crises and deviations from the plan

• These projects often lack the appropriate technical expertise

to handle such crises

Failure and Project Types - 2

– Type 2 - these are not well understood, and there may be

considerable uncertainty about specifically what must be done

• Many difficulties early in the life of the project

• Often considered planning problems

• Most of these problems result from a failure to define the

mission carefully

• Often fail to get the client’s acceptance on the project mission

Multiple Communication Paths

• Most of the project manager’s time is spent

communicating with the many groups interested in the project

– Considerable time must be spent selling, reselling, and

explaining the project

– Interested parties include:

Communication Realities

• To effectively deal with the demands, a PM must understand and deal with certain fundamental

issues:

– Must understand why the project exists

– Critical to have the support of top management

– Build and maintain a solid information network

– Must be flexible in many ways, with as many people, and about as many activities as possible throughout the

Selecting the Project Manager

• Some key attributes, skills, and qualities that have been sought in PM are:

– Strong technical background

– Assertive and successful functional manager

– Mature and calm

– Someone who is currently available

– Someone on good terms with senior executives

– Knows how to keep a team focused and inspired

– Experience in several different fucntions

– A person who can walk on (or part) the waters

PM Selection “Criteria”

• Four major categories of skills that are required for the PM and serve as the key criteria for selection:

– Credibility

– Sensitivity

– Managerial skills and adaptive leadership style

• Keeping the project on schedule and within costs

• Making sure reports are accurate and timely

• Ensuring project team has material, equipment, and labor when needed

• There are several ways for project managers to display sensitivity:

– Understanding the organization’s political structure

– Sense interpersonal conflict on the project team or between team members and outsiders

– Does not avoid conflict, but confronts it and deals with it

before it escalates

– Keeps team members focused on problems not people

Leadership Style

• Leadership: “interpersonal influence, exercised in situation and directed through the communication process, toward the attainment of a specified goal or goals.”

• Other attributes may include:

The PM “Moral Compass”

• A PM must also have a strong sense of ethics Some common ethical missteps are listed below:

– “wired” bids and contracts (the winner has been predetermined)

– “buy-in” (bidding low with the intention of cutting corners or forcing

subsequent contract changes)

– “kickbacks”

– “covering” for team members (group cohesiveness)

– taking “shortcuts” (to meet deadlines or budgets)

– using marginal (substandard) materials

– compromising on safety

The PM Ethics Code - 1

The PM Ethics Code - 2

PM and Stress

• Four major causes of stress associated PM role:

– Never developing a consistent set of procedures and

techniques with which to manage their work

– Many PMs have “too much on their plates”

– Some PMs have a high need to achieve that is frustrated by the tradeoffs

– The parent organization is in the middle of major

change

Multicultural Communications and

Managerial Behavior

• The importance of language cannot be overstated

– Communication cannot be separated from the communicator– Managerial and personal behaviors of the PM must be

considered in the communication process

• Structure and style of communications

• Managerial and personal behavior

Multicultural Communications and

Managerial Behavior

• Structure and Style of Communications:

– In the United States, delegation is a preferred managerial style– In cultures where authority is highly centralized, it becomes the project manager’s responsibility to seek out information

– The manager of an international project cannot count on being

voluntarily informed of problems and potential problems by

his or her subordinates

Multicultural Communications and

Managerial Behavior

• Managerial and Personal Behavior

– In a society with highly structured social classes, it is difficult to practice participative management

– There is an assumption that the more educated, higher-class

manager’s authority will be denigrated by using a participative style

– The more structured a country’s social system, the less direct managerial communication tends to be

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