Business Project Managing And Assignments Management Essay

Business Project Managing And Assignments Management Essay Introduction Before one can tackle the question at hand, i.e. the decisions that a project manager has to make in order to create a cohesive and productive environment for his project team, one must first be familiar with the basics of project management. Project management is a wide area which has gained relatively greater importance in the last three decades. Managers began to realize that project management techniques and abilities were central to the success or failure of projects and thus a great deal of research and literature was published on the factors that affect and influence project management techniques (Maylor, 2005). Needless to say, project management is an area of study that requires a great deal of study because of the number of variables associated with it. This paper will thus start off by giving a brief overview of project management in a bid to first establish that the environment in which the project team feels motivated can in fact determine the success or fa ilure of a project and then move on to critically analyze different ways in which a project manager can improve this environment per se. Business Project Management (1)Various texts have defined a project differently, one could informally see a project as a bid to accomplish a given objective through a set of interlinked tasks using a given amount of resources. It could be something as simple as planning a wedding or a more complex task like building a new house. More formally, a project can be defined as, â€Å"A complex, non-routine, one-time effort limited by time, budget, resources, and performance specifications designed to meet customer needs (Allan 2004, p.12).† From this formal definition we can deduce some main attributes of projects such as the fact that a project has an established objective, a defined life span, has specific time, cost and performance requirements and requires across-the-organization participation. The main attributes of a project are not only ess ential for planning and implementing the project but ultimately, the success or failure of a project is judged on how well it has adhered to these essential attributes. Basically one has to see how well a project meets customer requirements and whether it has been able to do it within the time, cost and performance requirements that had been initially established. As mentioned earlier, projects can comprise large complex assignments or small tasks spanning only a few days. For practical purposes, one must also be familiar with the prevailing types of organizational structures in order to better understand the various ways in which impending projects are tackled by various organizations. The first kind can be labeled as the functional organizational structure. Different segments of the project are delegated to respective functional units of the organization and coordination is maintained through normal communication channels. Such a structure allows for flexibility, in-depth expertis e and easy post-project transition for team members. At the same time however, there is poor integration, a lack of focus and more importantly a lack of ownership for the success or failure of particular tasks. Then there is the dedicated project team structure. It is normally implemented by projectized organizations that are mainly dependent on one time projects to conduct the bulk of their business. In this system, each task or assignment is treated as a distinct project and a group of employees is put into a project team and handed the sole responsibility of completing that particular project (Burke 2003, p.89). The system is fast, simple, cohesive and allows for cross-functional integration from different departments. On the downside, it proves expensive, leads to internal strife between team members and there arises a problem of post-project transition for the employees. Thirdly, there is the matrix structure. It’s a hybrid organizational structure and seeks to combine t he best attributes of the two structures formerly discussed. Basically, there are two chains of command and project participants report simultaneously to both functional and project managers. The matrix structure achieves a greater integration of expertise and project requirements. There are three sub-types of the matrix organizational structure. In the weak-form matrix, the authority of the functional manager predominates and the project manager only has indirect authority. In the balanced form matrix, the project manager sets the overall plan and the functional manager determines how work is to be done.