Activities of a Generic Project and the Skills of a Project Manager - Assignment Example

Activities of a Generic project and the Skills of a Project Manager Report Date Name University A project refers to a unique endeavor with the aim of producing a set of deliverables within specified time, quality and cost constraints.1 On the other hand, project managements refer to the tools, skills, and management processes needed to undertake a project successfully.2 Each generic project must undergo a project lifecycle, which consists of various phases that outline the required activities. The activities of a generic project model include project initiation or justification, project planning, project tracking and change control, and project reporting. It is extremely vital for the project management team to know each activity and its importance in project management. In addition, it is crucial for project managers to know the skills they must possess in order to manage a project effectively. Project initiation The foremost activity in the initiation process is project justification, review, and approval. The project management team is responsible for this activity because the resulting decisions affect the whole project. This activity involves determining the need and feasibility of the project. It involves the assessment of potential projects, the approval of a feasibility study, review of projects business case, and regular review of project progress in achieving business case.3 The project management team must undertake other, several and vital activities. These activities include goal definition, concept definition, and needs analysis, market analysis, and strategy definition, and cost-benefit analysis, preparation of the project charter, approval, and review of the project charter.4 Therefore, project initiation is significant because it enables the management team to define the objectives of a project. It enables the management team to establish the viability of a project and prevent investing in an endeavor that might lead to loss. Project initiation or justification is a vital activity because it allows management to identify a business problem or opportunity.5 This activity helps the management to identify and define a business case, and provide various solutions. In project management, justification is extremely crucial because it allows the project to run in a legal environment after the approval of the project charter. Many organizations have numerous projects running at the same time, and managers of these projects do not have enough skills. Failure to justify, approve, and review the project might lead to overstretching existing projects because new projects divert precious effort. This explains why it is essential to justify, approve, and review the project process. After the project undergoes justification, review, and approval the next activity is project planning. Project Planning Project planning is a chief activity in effective project management. An accurate and detailed planning of a project helps to produce the managerial information, which is the foundation of project justification and business case.6 This activity hosts other detailed activities, which a crucial for a successful project. Project planning helps to create a formal document that consists of project needs, tools, activities, stakeholders, and resources. Project planning is an activity that assists the management teams to create a project plan that outlines the tasks, activities, timeframes, and dependencies of the project. Therefore, it is a crucial activity because it enables the project team to identify the project activities and allocate activities to project members. It also assists in the management and proper utilization of the available time to avoid delays. Moreover, project planning is a vital activity because it allows the management team to plan for available resources. A project plan allows managers to list the required equipments, workforce, and materials. Every project requires a proper financial plan; thus, it is vital to plan for the available finances. Project planning enables the project management team to create a financial plan. This plan identifies the costs of required equipment, labor, and materials.7 In addition, it helps to create a quality plan that provides quality assurance, targets, and control measures for the entire project. A quality plan is vital because it ensures that the project delivers high-quality outputs in respect to client’s needs and specifications. Other interrelated activities include the definition of stakeholders, related projects, project developments strategy, projects risks, and development of cost and return on investment (ROI) scenarios.8 The whole activity of project planning involves creating a project, resource, financial, quality, risk, acceptance, communication, and procurement plan.9 A risk plan is vital it helps to identify the required actions to prevent risks and reduce the impacts of risks. It is necessary to mitigate critical project risks before entering the project tracking/ execution phase. Creating a financial plan is an essential activity because it ensures that there is proper budgeting for the project. It ensures that the project does not run out of cash or misuse the available funds. Project tracking/execution and change control Once project planning is complete, the management team seeks for approval to proceed to the next activity, project tracking, and change control, which involves execution and implementation of the project. This is typically the longest activity in terms of duration. It is a vital activity because it helps to construct and present deliverables to clients for acceptance. It helps to evaluate the project status, costs, and relevant information to stakeholders, sponsors, and project managers of related projects.10 The project management team achieves this through monitoring and controlling activities, expenditure, and required resources to build each deliverable. Project monitoring is a project management technique for measuring the actual project progress and time and cost current performance.11 Effective monitoring helps the project manager to reduce time delays and cost overruns to a minimum. In most cases, things do not always go according to plan; thus, project monitoring is crucial to detect and react appropriately to changes and deviations to plan. Controlling involves a set of processes and activities needed to correction divergence from plan. It helps to adjust the initial goals of a project by analyzing causes of performance problems, designing changes for tackling problems and evaluating, and implementing the changes. Project monitoring and control is a vital activity because it provides an understanding of the project progress; thus, helping the management team to identify when the performance of the project deviates from the plan. Consequently, the management team can take appropriate preventive and corrective actions. It is extremely vital for project managers to perform monitoring during the entire project process. Controlling is the key activity that involves taking preventive and corrective actions. The project manager must ensure that there is effective execution of the monitoring and control process. Project reporting and closing Project reporting and closing are the last activities in the project lifecycle. Reporting involves recording, editing, and distributing documents, which contain information concerning budget, status, and performance of several features of the project.12 Project reporting is vital because it helps to analyze the status and performance of scope, cost, time, safety, quality, and cash flow among other aspects. Following the acceptance of project deliverables by the client, the last activity in project management is project closure. It involves determining whether the project meets client needs, identifying any outstanding issues, handing project deliverables and documentation to client, cancelling contracts, and communicating the closure to stakeholders. The final activity in project closure is to review project completion to determine its success. Required skills for a project manager A project manager is an extremely vital professional in project management. The project manager has several responsibilities that fall in almost every activity on an entire project. He is responsible for planning, execution, and termination of any project. A project manager is accountable for the accomplishment of the stated objectives of a project. He is responsible for creating clear and achievable project activities, building project requirements, managing project constraints, which include time, scope and space. The project manager acts as a client representative and must determine and implement the precise needs of the client, in respect to the firm contacting the project. A project manager must possess several skills in order to realize client satisfaction and effectively address project time, cost and deliver quality outputs. Project managers are leaders and catalysts for the entire project because they put a motion on the projects. They are enablers who help team members complete tasks by providing needed resources and buffering forces that might disrupt the project.13 Therefore, it is extremely crucial for a project manager to possess leadership skills. He must be able to guide and inspire other project staff and lead in creating a vision and strive to attain it. A project manager can either be a transactional or transformational leader. As a leader, he should guide project staff by identifying their roles. He should inspire project staff to complete project tasks and achieve the intended objectives. A project manager should have a vision, motive and mobilize team members to accomplish project goals and agreed requirements. He should constantly switch from a leader to a manager, as projects require. Therefore, project managers ought to possess leadership skills. A project manager must possess communications skills. Project managers need to communicate regularly with the project team, subcontractors, customers, and company’s top management team.14 A project manager deals with a multiplicity of people and companies, which hem must bring together to achieve the project objectives. A project manager must communicate effectively both in speech and presentation. Communication skills are vital because they assist the project manager to provide the information required to fulfill identified tasks. Project managers must be excellent in discussing ideas and sharing knowledge with the project team. Frequent communication keeps the project moving and helps to identify potential problems, solicit suggestions to advance project performance, keep abreast of client satisfaction and avoid surprises.15 Proper communication skills mean that a project manager has excellent oral and written skills and is an excellent listener. He must possess the ability to provide vital information in a timely and efficient manner. Communication must be honest, timely, and unambiguous. In addition, a project manager must have analytical skills. The final stage of a project requires an impact analysis in order to evaluate the consequences of the changes brought by the project. Some central project that affects numerous stakeholders may have extreme effects; thus, a project manager must master analytical skills. A project manager must constantly review the impact analysis to attend to changes brought by the project. Project management is a multifaceted process that becomes complex in respect to the size of the project. A project manager must use analytical skills to track project progress in every step of the project life cycle. In addition, a project manager must have technical skills so that team members do not lose confidence. He should have excellent technical skills compared to other members to avoid fooling in the project’s technical aspects. Project manager should also have time management skills. Projects require numerous efforts because the entire process consists of concurrent activities. In some cases, some unexpected activities may occur, thus, interfering with the project timeline. In order to make optimal use of the available time, project managers must exhibit the will to delegate and the ability to prioritize.16 A project manager must develop skills to analyze the amount of time spent on project activities and the importance of time management in the completion of project activities. Moreover, a project manager must have interpersonal skills. These skills enable a project manager to establish clear expectations of project members for each member to understand assigned roles to attain project objectives.17 A project manager must have an excellent relationship with his team members and should not show partiality for team members. Interpersonal skills help the project manager to promote teamwork. He should encourage input from other people and be ready to work in a team setup. It is nearly not possible to complete a project without encountering problems. This requires project managers have problem solving skills. He must possess skills that enable him to identify the possible causes of a problem, analyze possible options, and determine the finest approach to solve the problem. In addition, project managers must have project management skills that enable him to plan and deploy a project. He should be able to execute a budget, prepare workable schedules, write reports, analyze, and develop risk management approaches. A project manager should be proactive in managing project risks. Conclusion A project is a sensitive endeavor that requires proper coordination of activities right from the initiation stage up to its closure. It is vital for the management team to have a proper understanding of each activity in order to ensure that the project succeeds. The project manager is an extremely crucial personnel who must exhibit, leadership, communication, technical, interpersonal, analytical and problem solving skills to guarantee that each project activity is a success. The entire project management process needs a leader with lots of knowledge in management and leadership. Bibliography Gido, Jack and Clements, James P. Successful Project Management. 4th edn, Cencage Learning, July 24, 2008. Greer, Michael. The Project Manager's Partner: A Step-By-Step Guide to Project Management, AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn, 2002. Lewis, James P. Fundamentals of Project Management. 3rd edn, AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn, 2007. Marco, Alberto. Project Management for Facility Constructions: A Guide for Engineers and Architects. Springer, 2011.  Thomsett, Rob. Radical Project Management, Prentice Hall Professional, 2002. Westland, Jason. The Project Management Life Cycle: A Complete Step-By-Step Methodology for Initiating, Planning, Executing & Closing a project Successfully. Kogan Page Publishers, 2007.     Read More