Project Management Situation, Essay Example

Introduction

The top five reasons mistakes are made during Project Management, according to Mochal (2003), are inadequate project definition and planning, weak scope change management, poor planning management, poor display of communication management, and the lack of quality control management. No project can be successful if all these variables are not adequately covered, as they affect each other and failure in one aspect can cause the entire project to fall apart.

Project Report and Analysis

Several shortcomings were evident immediately after Parish Council Works received news that its tender was successful for the construction of the new 100 kilometers Bluefield’s Super Highway Project in December of 2010. There were no strategic meetings by the overconfident and authoritarian Project Manager to bring the engineers, surveyors, environmental scientists, accountants, transportation managers, water experts, raw material manager, and community councilor to the table to ensure the goals and objectives are communicated, and input given by all, especially those who are expected to play vital roles at each stage.

The project was expected to last 12 months, but after six months it came to a standstill, as was evident by several yards of unused limestone, heavy equipment parked along the site rapidly corroding, the presence of several mini islands on the roadway, and angry road crews protesting their lack of pay for work done over six weeks ago.

The dismal failure of Project Super Highway was televised nationally, and the opposition party in the government used the opportunity to berate the ruling party, accusing it of large scale corruption, abuse of tax payers money and exploitation by Stakeholders like the trade unions, environmentalist and community council groups also joined the protest in support of the workers and their lack on involvement if the planning of the project.

The obvious failure was due to poor project management overall with communication, poor scope change, lack of project definition and a lack of efficient cash flow management, in addition to poor weather control management.

Had the Project Manager who was now in hiding, brought all the stakeholders around one table, and communicated to them that he will be solely responsible for the project which he was defining, then outline its objectives as well as well as that of the Parish Council Works, followed by revealing the establish schedule, the cost of the 100 kilometer road, and the expected completion date, before seeking feedback from all participants, he would have been able to avert the disaster experienced.

Additionally, Gantt Charts according to Durfee (2008) are strong project management tools that combine activities and task completion time efficiently, would be a vital asset to the success of the project, in that the manager would be able to give each team a visual representation of when and where it will fit into the overall project, so that proper time scheduling could be done before the adverse weather could intervene.

The Importance of Strategic Alignment

In order for strategic alignment to be achieved according to Mosaic Projects (2011), the project objectives must be aligned with the organizational objectives by ensuring balanced and comprehensive objectives are set, making sure these objectives are specific and durable, having the appropriate staffing structure, seeking stakeholders contribution and agreement, and using climatic data to accurately forecast environmental and organization projections.

A Strategic Planning process, according to Bowman (2005) will serve the purpose of enabling an organization to focus on the few activities at every stage that will ensure values are added, and the ultimate goals sub groups are achievable and contribute to the overall organizational goals and objectives.

Critically, the project manager for this particular project had to ensure that his objective of building the 100 km Super Highway was achievable and durable, given the budget provided, the skill levels and competence of the staffing recruited, proper and timely communication of all stakeholder were made, and the organizational objectives of generating $100 m annually realistic, and then factor  and effectively supervise all these variables in his daily activities, if he was going to achieve strategic alignment by the completion date of the project.

Conclusions

Strategic Alignment therefore can make all the difference between an organization project incurring millions of dollars in losses, get cancelled or completed on time and to the satisfaction of all its stakeholders especially its sponsors and the consumers.

Success using all the variables concerned however, cannot be achieved without constant monitoring, communicating, scope changes, and budget evaluations to ensure deadlines are met and resources for the next stage are in place.

Finally, the success gain from achieving strategic alignment is both a motivational and financial asset to an organization, in that its team would have advanced its learning curve from the experience to ensure greater competence for future challenging projects, sponsors will not hesitate to provide the future financial backing, and its reputation will precede it at all project competitive procurement sessions.

Reference

Bowman, S., (2005). Embedding Ethics into your Strategic Plan Life Mastery www.australianstrategicplanninginstitute.com/results, 12/08/11

Durfee, W., (2008). Project Planning and Gantt Charts www.me.umn.edu/courses/me2011/handouts , 12/14/11

Mochal, T., (2003). Poor Planning is Project Management Mistake Number One IT Project Operations. Management www.techrepublic.com/article/poor-planning-is-project–management-mistake-number-one/5034294 , 12/14/11

Mosaic (2011). Strategic Alignment White Paper Practical PM Pty Ltd. www.mosaicprojects.com.au/whitepaper/WP10026-Strategic_Alignment.pdf , 12/14/11