Project Leadership and Management - Coursework Example

Project Management Student’s name: Institution: Instructor: Subject: Project Management Introduction Project management is geared up towards ensuring that the goals and objectives of a specific project are realised with the highest possible degrees of success. In the wake of increased dynamics in the global world necessitating continuous organisational improvement and realignment in addition to ever growing contractual / seasonal assignments, project management has risen to be an important organisational management function. Key functions in project management and planning include resourcing, risk management and leadership and project management plans. The discussion in the following essay assumes the potion of a project manager for a 3 day music festival to be held in country Victoria across the Australia Day Weekend in 2016. Insight into the Project It is worth giving an insight into what the project is all about. As pointed out earlier, the project aims at successfully organising and hosting a 3 day music festival in country Victoria in the weekend falling in the Australia Day. Australia Day is celebrated on the 26th January of every year. The day is used to mark an anniversary of the arrival of the 1st British ship fleet that docked at Port Jackson in 1788 followed by the raising of the Great Britain flag by the then Governor Arthur Phillip. On this point, it is important to highlight that the present day Australia is a society formed from a population descending from diverse national and cultural backgrounds. The British have the highest foreign influence on Australia; having conquered the land, colonised it and later on inhabited it. With time, the meaning of Australia Day has transformed into a family day, presentation of community awards day, celebration of citizenship and reflections into the country’s history so as to incorporate the diverse Australian society. The 3 day music festival is planned to be held across the Australian Day weekend in 2016 in the country Victoria. In the past, the festival has been attended by 8000 to 12000 people. For this reason, the project management should make logistics that support the expected crowd in addition to about 20% more as turnout growth is expected. The local weather in the host location is settled and fine. Therefore, there are no expected challenges from weather extremes. However, the local accommodation is limited; thus presenting a major challenge to project managers with respect to accommodating the attendees. It is imperative that the project management comes up with an innovative approach to counter this challenge (Masterman & Wood 2006, p.12). The roads leading to the venue are narrow, winding and hilly. As such, it is important that the event management has in place an effective traffic control system so as to avoid unnecessary jam and accidents. Project Resourcing Plan Resources are key factors influencing the success of any project. Ideally, without resources, event management would not be in a position to deliver on their responsibilities. Project resource planning acknowledges the importance of resources in the project success and comes up with a framework of optimising on the available resources so as to ensure highest possible project success degrees (Bob Little 2011, p. 37). Project resource planning identifies all the resource requirements of a project and maps out where they will be sourced from and at what time (Kerzner 2013, p, 47). In the context of the 3 day music festival, some of the key resources that are required in the project includes, entertainment and public address systems, security personnel, emergency, health and ambulances, ticketing system, sales and marketing personnel, musicians & other performance artists, catering and beverage service personnel, accommodation resources, transport, lighting, sanitation and hygiene resources amongst others. There is a need for the project management to source the resources in an integrated approach so as to be able to ensure that it gets the best quality services / resources (Srivastava, Kambhampati & Do 2001, p.83). First, the project management should look for corporate and individual sponsors. In the past, the music festival has received sponsorships from corporate and individuals. The project management should ensure that they incorporate past sponsors into the event in addition to reaching out to more sponsor who might have diverse interests in the festival. Riding on the fact that the festival has the ability to reach out to more than 8000 people, it is evident that the high numbers can act as a leverage point to the project management as they try to woo potential sponsors. Additionally, the project management can rent out exhibition space to organizations, firms and individuals who would like to showcase their products to the attendees. In exchange for this, the exhibitors would pay specific fees based on the exhibition space allocated to them. Next, the project management should procure the services of a renowned sales platform, e-sales platform included that would provide them with a better platform to make a high number of ticket sales (Carlsen, Andersson, Ali-Knight, Jaeger & Taylor 2010, p. 122). In conjunction with this, project management should also contract a sales and marketing company that would increase public awareness about the festival thus attracting a larger audience. This would ensure that the project is able to get a larger pool of financial resources as opposed to a situation where the project management did sales and marketing by itself. Lastly, the project management should identify key functional areas as identified in the resource map above and contract potential suppliers and contractors that have the resources and skills to provide specific services such as catering. This would ensure that the project is more successful as opposed to an instance where the project management would provide such services internally. Risk Management Risks are undesired occurrences that are expected or not expected to occur within the life of a project (Ward & Chapman 2003, p.98). On this point, it is worth noting that there is no project that is 100% risk proof. Ideally, the project management has varying capacity to prevent project risk. In instances of internal risks; project management have higher control over the risks as opposed to risks from external forces. Risk management is a sequential management process that identifies risks, prioritises them and identifies possible mitigation strategies to counter them (Berg 2010, p. 98). Going back to the music festival project, risk management plan should identify risks that are inherent to the project and in turn come up with possible mitigation strategies. The project is prone to power losses, health concerns due to congestion, traffic congestion, theft, communication and littering. So as to mitigate the risks, the project management should come up with a power backup plan with standby generators to power the event. The event should also have paramedics, first aid, emergency response and ambulance services to mitigate any health concerns. The project management should liase with the local traffic police control and scouts and girl guide movement to offer traffic control. Additionally, the management should liase with communication companies who would provide network boosters to counter the expected airwave congestion. This risk management plan is best suited to manage risk inherent to the project since it takes up the risk from the project management and places it on the hands of entities that are better placed to offer better services thus reducing the instances of undesired events happening in addition to having a competent response system in place (Kumaraswamy & Matthews 2000, p. 48). Leadership and Management Plan Project leadership and management is another key function that has a substantial influence on project success (Müller & Turner 2007, p. 24). Implicitly, it is the fabric that wraps up all project activities into one; piecing together individual tasks to form the larger project deliverable. As such, it is important that project management has appropriate leadership and management plans in place to ensure project success (Müller & Turner 2010, p. 438). Reflecting back to the 3 day music festival, the best leadership and management approach that should be used by the project management is a directive / charismatic leadership style. Directive leadership and management ensure that all stakeholder operate within a specific direction as provide for in the project plan (Sims, Faraj & Yun 2009, p. 151). On this point, it is worth appreciating that fact that an event of such a high magnitude as this requires that finite details be taken into consideration in project planning and execution so as to reduce risks; which are evidently high. Additionally, the many number of subcontractor and supply would need to be regulated as per contractual agreements. This makes directive leadership and management style condusive to the project. On the other hand, charismatic leadership and management reaches out to the emotional aspects of the subjects in such a manner that creates a shared vision, motivation and general good will to achieve project objectives. From the above discussion, it can be acknowledged that the two leadership approaches are best suited for the project Conclusion In conclusion, this essay has been able to highlight the importance of project management and planning in enhancing project success. The essay identified key factors in the project plan that should be considered in project planning and management. Key issues identified and discussed in the essay were project resourcing plan, risk management and leadership and management plans. References Berg, H. P. 2010. Risk management: procedures, methods and experiences.Risk Manage, Vol. 1, pp. 79-95. Bob, Little, 2011. The principles of successful project management: It takes careful planning, skilful leadership … and a little bit of luck", Human Resource Management International Digest, Vol. 19, No.7, pp. 36 – 39 Carlsen, J., Andersson, T. D., Ali-Knight, J., Jaeger, K., & Taylor, R. 2010. Festival management innovation and failure,  International Journal of Event and Festival Management, Vol.1, No. 2, pp.120-131. Kerzner, H. R., 2013. Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons. Kumaraswamy, M., & Matthews, D. 2000. Improved subcontractor selection employing partnering principles. Journal of management in engineering, Vol. 16, No. 3, pp. 47-57. Masterman, G., & Wood, E. H. 2006. Innovative marketing communications: Strategies for the events industry. Routledge. Müller, R., & Turner, R. 2007. Matching the project manager’s leadership style to project type. International journal of project management, Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 21-32. Müller, R., & Turner, R. 2010. Leadership competency profiles of successful project managers. International Journal of Project Management, Vol. 28, No.5, pp.437-448. Sims, H. P., Faraj, S., & Yun, S. 2009. When should a leader be directive or empowering? How to develop your own situational theory of leadership.Business Horizons, Vol. 52, No.2, pp. 149-158. Srivastava, B., Kambhampati, S., & Do, M. B. 2001. Planning the project management way: Efficient planning by effective integration of causal and resource reasoning in RealPlan. Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 131, No.1, pp. 73-134. Ward, S., & Chapman, C. 2003. Transforming project risk management into project uncertainty management. International Journal of Project Management, Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 97-105. Read More