Transcript Project Management: A Managerial Approach 4/e

Project Management:
A Managerial Approach 4/e
By Jack R. Meredith and Samuel J. Mantel, Jr.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Presentation prepared by RTBM WebGroup
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
Chapter 3-1
Project Management and the
Project Manager
The Functional Manager
Chapter 3-2
Project Management and the
Project Manager
The Functional Manager
Analytical Approach
Direct, technical supervisor
The Project Manager
Systems Approach
Facilitator and generalist
Chapter 3-3
Project Management and the
Project Manager
The Project Manager
Chapter 3-4
Project Management and the
Project Manager
Three major questions face the project manager:
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?
Project manager is responsible for organizing,
staffing, budgeting, directing, planning, and
controlling the project.
Chapter 3-5
Responsibilities of a Project
Manager
Responsibility to the Parent Organization
Responsibility to the Client
Responsibility to the Team Members
Above all, the Project Manager must
never allow senior management to be
surprised
Chapter 3-6
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
Chapter 3-7
Responsibilities of the
Project Manager
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, respect, honesty
Concern for members’ future after project
Chapter 3-8
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 degreed programs
Chapter 3-9
Importance of Project
Management Experience
Experience as a project manager 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
The career path often starts with participation in
small projects, and later in larger projects, until
the person is given control over small, then larger
projects
Chapter 3-10
Special Demands on the
Project Manager
A number of demands are critical to the
management of projects:
Acquiring adequate resources
Acquiring and motivating personnel
Dealing with obstacles
Making project goal trade offs
Dealing with failure and the risk and fear of
failure
Maintaining breadth of communication
Chapter 3-11
Negotiation
Acquiring Adequate Resources
Resources initially budgeted for projects are
frequently insufficient
Sometimes resource trade-offs are required
Subcontracting is an option
Project and functional managers perceive
availability of resources to be strictly limited
Competition for resources often turns into “winlose” propositions between project and functional
managers
Chapter 3-12
Acquiring and Motivating
Personnel
A major problem for the project manager 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 project manager cannot promise much
beyond the challenge of the work itself
Chapter 3-13
Acquiring and Motivating
Personnel
Characteristics of effective team
members:
High quality technical skills
Political sensitivity
Strong problem orientation
Strong goal orientation
High self-esteem
Chapter 3-14
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 issues:
1. Last minute schedule and technical changes
2. Uncertainty surrounding what happens to members
of the project team when the project is completed
Chapter 3-15
Making Project Goal
Trade-offs
The project manager 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
project managers 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
Chapter 3-16
Making Project Goal
Trade-offs
 Relative importance of project objectives for each stage
of the project life cycle:
Chapter 3-17
Failure and 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
By dividing all projects into two general
categories, interesting differences in the nature
and timing of perceived difficulties can be found
Chapter 3-18
Failure and the Risk of
Fear and Failure
Two general types of projects:
Type 1 - these projects are generally wellunderstood, 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
Chapter 3-19
Failure and the Risk of
Fear and Failure
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
Chapter 3-20
Breadth of Communication
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:
Top management
Functional departments
Clients
Members of the project team
Chapter 3-21
Breadth of Communication
To effectively deal with the demands, a project
manager 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 life of the project
Chapter 3-22
Selecting the Project Manager
Some of the most popular attributes, skills, and
qualities that have been sought in project
managers are:
Strong technical background
Hard-nosed manager
A mature individual
Someone who is currently available
Someone on good terms with senior executives
A person who can keep the project team happy
One who has worked in several different departments
A person who can walk on (or part) the waters
Chapter 3-23
Selecting the Project Manager
Four major categories of skills that are
required for the project manager and
serve as the key criteria for selection:
Credibility
Sensitivity
Leadership and management style
Ability to handle stress
Chapter 3-24
Credibility
The project manager needs two kinds of
credibility:
Technical credibility - perceived by the client,
senior executives, the functional departments,
and the project team as possessing sufficient
technical knowledge to direct the project
Administrative credibility - keeping the
project on schedule and within costs and making
sure reports are accurate and timely. Must also
make sure the project team has material,
equipment, and labor when needed. Chapter 3-25
Sensitivity
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 “cool”
Sensitive set of technical sensors - ability to sense when
team members may try to “sweep things under the rug”
Chapter 3-26
Leadership and
Management Style
Leadership has been defined as:
“interpersonal influence, exercised in situation and directed through the
communication process, toward the attainment of a specified goal or
goals.”
Other attributes may include:
enthusiasm
optimism
energy
tenacity
courage
personal maturity
Chapter 3-27
Ethical Issues
 A project manager 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
violating standards
consultant (e.g., auditors) loyalties (to employer or to client or to public)
Chapter 3-28
Ability to Handle Stress
Four major causes of stress associated with the
management of projects:
1. Never developing a consistent set of procedures and
techniques with which to manage their work
2. Many project managers have “too much on their
plates”
3. Some project managers have a high need to achieve
that is consistently frustrated
4. The parent organization is in the middle of major
change
Chapter 3-29
Impact of Institutional
Environments
A culture’s institutions are a part of the
environment for every project
In general systems theory, the
environment of a system is defined as
everything outside the system that
receives outputs from it or delivers inputs
to it
Chapter 3-30
Impact of Institutional
Environments
Project managers must consider the
following environments and how they may
impact a project:
Socioeconomic environment
Legal environment
The business cycle as an environment
Technological environment
Chapter 3-31
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
project manager must be considered in the
communication process
Structure and style of communications
Managerial and personal behavior
Chapter 3-32
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
Chapter 3-33
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
Chapter 3-34
Summary
The project manager has responsibilities to
the organization, the project, and to the
project team
There are many career paths available to an
experienced project manager
Typically, a project manager faces unique
demands relating to resources, personnel,
communication and negotiation
Chapter 3-35
Summary
Two factors critical to the success of a
project are top management support and the
existence of a problem orientation within the
team members
Compared to a functional manager, a project
manager is a generalist rather than a
specialist, a synthesizer rather than an
analyst, and a facilitator rather than a
supervisor
Chapter 3-36
Summary
There are common characteristics of effective
project team members: technical skills,
political sensitivity, problem orientation, and
high self esteem
The best person to select as the project
manager is the one who will get the job done
Valuable skills for the project manager are:
credibility, political sensitivity, and leadership
Chapter 3-37
Summary
Cultural elements refer to the way of life for
any group of people including technology,
institutions, language, and art
The project environment includes: economic,
political, legal, and sociotechnical aspects
Cultural issues include: the group’s perception
of time and the manner of staffing projects
Language is a particularly critical aspect of
culture for the project
Chapter 3-38
The Project Manager
Questions?
Chapter 3-39
The Project Manager
Picture Files
The Project Manager
Figure 3-1
The Project Manager
Figure 3-2
The Project Manager
Table Files
The Project Manager
The Project Manager
The Project Manager
The Project Manager
The Project Manager
The Project Manager
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