Role of a leader in project management
The final journal needs to reflect upon what you have learned in this unit. Did it meet your expectations? Did you develop the skills that you set out to learn at the beginning? Did your expectations change during the conduct of the course?
Project governance is a type of management framework in which, all the decisions related to projects are made. It is a critical component of any project because responsibilities and accountabilities of the organization are included in the arrangements of their organizational governance. For example, the organizational chart provides a brief indication of the responsibilities related to operational activities conducted by an organization (Biesenthal & Wilden, 2014). Governance is not the latest concept, this term is being used frequently since last decade in managing the business. Governance of a project includes consistent management, guidance, framing cohesive policies, processes, and decision making for the success of a project. In this reflective journal, I am going to describe my learnings from the book “Project Management Leadership: Building Creative Teams” written by Rory Bruke and Steve Barron. This book was published in 2014 and contains the brief information about project governance and leadership factors required for the success of a project. The learnings of this book can be applied in various real-life situations as management need leadership and leadership is a part of governance. Further, in this report, I am also going to discuss my personal experiences where I have applied the outcomes of this book and got positive results (Burke & Barron, 2014).
As a leader of my team in an event management company, I always get a chance to manage different type of projects. I have to lead my team according to the requirements of different projects. This book helped me a lot in understanding the basic qualities for becoming a successful leader along with efficient project manager. This book developed a sense in my mind that projects are always get affected by internal and external factors and thus these should be managed accordingly. As a project manager, I need to consider the wider aspects of the existing environment to appreciate the included topics and their interrelatedness with each other. I got to know that a project manager is required to have leadership skills to lead and influence participants altogether to attain the strategy and vision for driving project efficiently. Although there are different leadership styles and techniques that also have different impacts. But the objective of all styles is the same i.e. successful completion of all the project requirements. From the starting of my leadership carrier, I am a very task-oriented person. I used to complete all the tasks in given time frame and sometimes, I also used to provide extra information related to the given task that was not even demanded. This dedication towards managing projects has helped me a lot and I have always provided opportunities to lead the teams either in schools, colleges or at my workplace. This book has taught me that leading and managing a project, one needs to pursue some skills that can help him in understanding the requirements and finding out solution accordingly. I can define the required skills as follows:
Role of team members and stakeholders
Technical Management Skills
Project Entrepreneurship Skills
Project Management Skills
Project leadership Skills
In my opinion and experience, a project using matric type organizational structure, then the project leader is not required to have official authority over the organizational resources in order to complete the project. In this situation, I usually have to use my influencing and negotiating skills with resource providers to grab the best deals. As a project manager, it is my duty to find out that project has the positive minded people to perform the job and whether they are doing the job in right way or not (Meng & Boyd, 2017).
I have learned from my reading and working that in order to complete the project successfully, support from stakeholders and team members is measured equally as the leadership effects. A leader can only perform his duties and can apply his leadership skills efficiently when he has a supporting team to follow his instructions. As given in this book, stakeholders also play an important role in the successful completion of a project. In all my projects first I need to identify the expectations and requirement of stakeholders to develop my leadership plan. Involvement of stakeholders in necessary to evaluate the progress of the project. Their involvement provides direction and also ensures that either the workings are going in right direction or not (Junior, et al., 2015).
Along with the support of stakeholders, support of interdisciplinary team also has the same importance in the journey of a successful project. I have completed many projects where my all team members were usually from different professional backgrounds. These type of teams are known as interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary teams. In managing my teams, I used to work hard in combining the point of view of all members. But I also believe that team members from different professional backgrounds having different qualifications can help a lot because they all have different point of views that can present almost all the positive and negative aspects of the project. These type of team combinations are most popular and preferred because of its importance in discussing challenges and problems with a variety of perspectives (Hobbs & Petit, 2017).
I have realized in my career that the importance of interdisciplinary team can be seen in the result of the projects because results are framed on the basis of various opinions. Chances of the success of projects also increase when it is completed using various minds and thoughts. But from the leadership perspective, it is not easy to manage a team where all members have different opinions and they all are right in their own ways. In such situation, the problem occurs for the project manager regarding the selection of appropriate leadership techniques and methods (Freeman, et al., 2011).
Managing business along with capacity management
One of my understandings after completing this book includes that business management and capacity management are affected by the environmental changes and thus management of various projects also get affected accordingly. Environmental changes include changes in the external and internal environmental factors of the business. I have seen that changes in external environmental factors affect more than changes in internal factors in case of project management. A sudden change in political environment can change the requirement of stakeholders. Similarly, changes in the social environment can result in changing the social requirement of the project. I have learned that if the environmental conditions are fluctuating then project structure and framework should be planned in such a way so that changes can be made without occurring any huge loss and damage to the business. This can have a greater impact on the development of business as if the environmental conditions are continuously changing that there are fewer chances of growth of the business. It is so because firstly managers need to adopt changes in the proper way, after that they can focus on the development of the business (He, 2010).
In environmental changing situations, management of capacity in efficient manner increases the chances of success in the running and future projects. In my opinion, capacity management is related to how the existing capacity can be used to obtain the maximum output. Capacity management is a part of operations management because an organization uses its existing resources primarily in its operations. Capacity planning and its successful application can impact the project management because the leader only applies the methods and techniques for which he has resources and capacity to perform. Business development, capacity planning, and environmental changes are the facts that cannot be separated from each other and changes in any one of them can affect the others as well. Collectively all the factors affect the efficiency and capability of a project manager to manage the project (Freidi, 2014).
Another concept which I would like to discuss here is the proficiency of project management plans that are helpful in complex working situations. Many professionals have an opinion that project management plan contains a huge chart with a pre-specified schedule. But in my understanding from the study and working experience, a project management plan is just a document defining the process of execution, monitoring and controlling process of the project. It provides more information than a scheduled chart. An effective understanding of project plan may result in rich dividends to the business in terms of successful completion of the project. The project manager is responsible to create a plan for the efficient management of the project containing inputs from the key stakeholders and project team. The document can be summarized or a detailed one including subsidiary management plans, baseline and other important documents of planning. This document defines the approaches and methods adopted by the project team to provide the desired project management scope.
The capacity of the project management plan of handling complex situation depends upon the type of business industry and projects. In my opinion, plans can be framed in two types for handling any type of project. These types can be distinguished as easy and complicated. A plan is classified as easy one when there are basic relationships between the tasks and detailed organization and planning is not required. A small team, few stakeholders, and collaborations are the only requirements for such type of projects. In case of complicated plans, there are many complicated task interdependencies. In these types of projects, I always try to find out the simplification which is not possible at all (Kendrick, 2015). To simply these type of projects many cloud-based apps are used that automatically calculates the best path of the project. Selection of project plan depends upon the complexities of the projects and capability of the project team and manager to handle the plan.
Once I was given a project of managing an event for the charity purpose. This was the first time when I was managing this type of project. I and my team of five members inspected the project and its requirement as well. I always follow the democratic style of leadership in managing my project because it provides satisfaction among team members that they are getting chance to show their capabilities. Since I have team members from different study backgrounds, they helped me out in finding various negative and positive aspects of the projects. Stakeholders wanted to collect funds in a huge amount to donate to an orphanage. I and my team keeping this requirement in mind, planned our strategies and projected the event in an efficient way. We had to prepare a complicated plan because charity is something which is not easy to collect but events are the main sources for collecting charity. Concerned execution team worked according to our projected plan and the event was very successful. Stakeholders were satisfied with the results of our projected plan and I received an award for managing the event successfully. This event taught me that project management cannot be done without the support of the team and effective project management plan. Leadership skills and techniques are also played an important role in the success of this event.
Conclusion:
On the basis of above reflective I have an opinion that project management is the primary requirement of every business because without managing the project, a business cannot get success in long run. For managing a project effectively, the project manager is required to have sound leadership skills. It is so because he is the only one who can influence his team members and can make them work in the desired manner. Selection of leadership style also matters a lot in case of project management. The understanding can also be framed that environmental changes affect the management of a project to project are planned in such a way so that changes can be made in them as when required. Though project management is the responsibility of project manager several factors are responsible for the effective management performed by the manager. In order to understand such factors, it is required that all aspects related to the project should be analyzed carefully and then management plan is drawn accordingly.
References
Biesenthal, C. & Wilden, R., 2014. Multi-level project governance: Trends and opportunities. International Journal of Project Management, Volume 30, pp. 1291-1308.
Burke, R. & Barron, S., 2014. Project Management Leadership: Building Creative Teams. 2nd ed. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.
Freeman, J. W. et al., 2011. Interdisciplinary collaboration within project-level NEPA teams in the US Forest Service. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 54(5), pp. 597-615.
Freida, S. S. A., 2014. Determinants of the best practices for successful project management. International Journal of u-and e-Service, Science and Technology, 7(3), pp. 173-186.
He, Y., 2010. Environmental Management within Projects. International Journal of Business and Management, 5(1), pp. 205-210.
Hobbs, B. & Petit, Y., 2017. Agile Methods on Large Projects in Large Organizations. Project Management Journal, 48(3), pp. 3-19.
Junior, A. C. P., Porto, G. S., Pacifico, O. & Salgado, A. P., 2015. Project Stakeholder Management: A Case Study of a Brazilian Science Park. Journal of Technology Management and Innovation, 10(1), pp. 39-49.
Kendrick, T., 2015. Identifying and Managing Project Risk: Essential Tools for Failure-Proofing Your Project. New York City: AMACOM.
Meng, X. & Boyd, P., 2017. The role of the project manager in relationship management. International Journal of Project Management, 35(5), pp. 717-728
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