Discuss about the Project Management Of Case Study Of Communication.
This particular case study is based on an incident of communication failure in an organization that interrupted the regular business growth and commercial success at the same time. According the case study Herb, eight years of experienced employee was assigned for a job of a project manager but due to communication failure among the project manager and the rest of the project team members the project manager failed to satisfy their consumers (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017). From the last past 8 year he has been working in many research and development and product quality enhancement projects but he has no experienced about the responsibilities required to be served by a project manager.
In order to accomplish the project the nominated project team members were Alice, Bob, Betty and Frank along with other 10 altogether 14 members. Though at the project starting phase the activities were running quite well but due to serious communication failure the project faced major problems. In order to resolve those problems communication errors are needed to be resolved permanently.
The purpose of this particular case is to accomplish the project assigned by the company successfully within estimated time and budget. It will make sure that the project manager is meeting the project objectives or not. After analyzing the total case it has been found that the project failure took place due to miscommunication. In order to avoid communication failure proper organizational communicate approaches should be adopted by project manager and those are to be followed simultaneously by each of the project team member (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017). The purpose of this case is to identify those accurate communication approaches that may help herb to avoid miscommunication rather serious communication failure management .
Project communication is referred to as an art which is very crucial for any business organization to make a project outcome successful. Success of any project that is whether handled by professional project team members or by other cross departmental teams, are dependent on the set of communication techniques and skills possessed by each of the member (Ahuja & Priyadarshini, 2015). Moreover it can be said that, communication is that tool which may either make or break a project success. Communication failure is always defines as an obstacles which interrupt any project to meet its objectives and goal. Apart from this different communication channels are also there such as downward, upward, horizontal etc that manages and improves the communication approaches followed by any business organization.
Effective communication plan can facilitate the members associated to the project team. It must be used uniformly throughout the project development phase. Better communications improves the performance of the project team members and also avoids both intra organizational and inter organizational failure (Austin & Pinkleton, 2015). The stakeholders can be easily updated and simultaneously creates additional project documents also easily. Apart from this, it also helps to create pln for resolving different issues.
The project sponsors are the key stakeholders of any project and without sponsors a project cannot be start and not even be completed. For a single project there may exists more than one project sponsors. The project sponsors are the key group of person who provides the necessary financial resources to the project team in terms of cash or advertisements (Greenaway et al., 2015). The sponsors who work for the project management team especially helps for the project matters like funding, scope, progress monitoring etc. Sponsors may be sometimes defines as the part of a project team. Even at the end of the project the acceptance from the project sponsors are also required.
The role of a program manager does not differ much from a senior responsible owners. Program managers should deliver the complete project by incorporating necessary changes to it (Kaiser, Arbi & Ahlemann, 2015). They are responsible to make co ordination with the program’s project. Not only this u also they also manages the inter dependencies of the project management team.
The project managers are responsible to develop proper project activities as well as resource planning. Project managers play the most important role for any project by controlling and monitoring it until the successful completion of the project (Men, 2014). The project manager is only responsible to motivate the rest of the project team members to steer the project team down to a clear direction to reach to the final goal. Apart from this, another important role that is served by the project manager is to ensure customer satisfaction (Sadia et al., 2016) A good project manager should know the way through which risks and uncertainty can be eventually minimized.
The line managers are responsible in the role of business operation. In order to achieve specific operational and functional goal, each individual is responsible is responsible to manage the employees. Line managers are responsible to recruit and hire talent for filling the empty position of a project team (DeviKrishnaya, Jamaludin & Ismail, 2017). They provide training and proper support to the new joiners. Cross training, team metrics, performance feedback are the other responsibilities to be served by a line manager.
Alice was the seasoned expert who has been working in the company even more than Herb. He was responsible to co-ordinate with the efforts of the R&D personnel. According to the background of the case it has been found that Alice was expecting a promotion but he never said about this directly to Herb (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017). Due to long term experience, Alice was expecting a recommendation for promotion from Herb. However, for communication failure Herb did not write any letter of recommendation for Alice’s promotion.
In order to resolve this particular communication failure the communication approach and communication tool that should be followed by Alice and Herb are lateral communication and weekly status report respectively (Mok, Shen & Yang, 2015). As Alice was working in the research and development tem of the company thus Alice should be aware of the up-to-date information set.
Bob is also working for this company longer than Herb. He spends his career as an engineer and he would co-ordinate as the engineer in the company (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017). In the case there is no clear mention of communication problem regarding Bob, as he was responsible for engineering drafts delivery.
In order to avoid organizational miscommunication the Bob should use lateral communication approach and as a tool must use discussion forum. Discussion forum is a type of meeting which allows all the project team members including external and internal stakeholders also share their ideas with each other (Pritchard, 2013). In addition to this she will also be able to present her expectation with the successful accomplishment of the project.
Betty was absolutely new in the company and she was responsible to manage all the necessary reports, record management and manufacturing planning also (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017). As she was new in the company thus she failed to communicate professionally with Herb, which acted as an obstacle.
As Betty was new in the company thus she was not aware about each professional activity. It is recommended to Betty to use tracking and case software as a communication tool and lateral communication approach during the manufacturing phase (Pritchard, 2013). This online help desk will help Betty to track the flow of the project. As much Betty became familiar with the project it will be easier for her to understand the others concern.
Frank was the manufacturing engineer of the company and he was recruited as a manufacturing engineer. Until the final preparation of the manufacturing plan Frank was also a part time on the job (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017). He also failed to convince Herb for recommending her as a permanent part of the project.
Meeting is the one of the most important communication tools that should be used by Frank to become up-to-date and aware about the manufacturing requirements. It will help Frank to convince Herb, about the promotion (Pritchard, 2013). Besides this conference and email are two other communication tools to be used by Frank as these will allow her to share ideas and newly developed approaches to other project team members. If the suggestions served by Frank are found to be appropriate then she can convince Herb to promote her designation as a permanent.
Project maturity model is referred to as a model consists of progressive development of a business organization project management approach along with methodology, strategy and decision making process as well (Ham, Aragón & Martonosi, 2015). While assessing or monitoring the progress of a project towards success, the proper level of maturity may varies in terms of specific goal, strategy, resource capability, scope and requirement. Overall, it can be said that for demonstrating the improvement of a project that will be delivered project maturity model is an important tool to be created.
Different kinds of project management maturity models exists in the real field of application that helps to improve the performance of the project manager and project team members as well (Greenaway et al., 2015). Most of the PMMM are inspired by the Capability maturity models. It helps to gain competitive advantages and higher level advantages as well. Most of the International engineering and construction companies are currently using the concept of PMMM.
Communication is referred to as an important tool that helps to improve the quality of a project and also gives different opportunities to the business organization. Regardless of the size and background of a project communication techniques required to be adopted by the project managers (Heagney, 2016). Different communication methods are there such as phone calls, emails, meeting etc that are widely used by the business organizations while sharing the ideas and creativity with others. Effective as well as efficient communication helps to establish secure bridge between the project manager and other project stakeholders. Communication helps to take proper decision and also resolve different intra and inter organizational conflicts.
Considering the background of the case it can be said that there are different project communication tools available those can be applied accordingly (Austin & Pinkleton, 2015). It is the role of the project manager to choose the most suitable tool to serve internal communication successfully. The different communication tools those are widely used by the business organizations include: social intranet software
However, for this case the most suitable communication tool is weekly status report development through face to face to face meeting arrangement.
For this particular case the project manager should use lateral channel for communication and open communication as an approach (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017). Open communication approach helps the project manager and the project team members to share their point of views with each other. Open communication allows establishing creative ideas for project success. Open communication can again be done through the application of different tools such as:
Conclusion
From the overall discussion it can be concluded that, communication failure lead a business organization towards commercial loss. It is the responsibility of the project manager and the other project team members to maintain proper communication styles to avoid any kind of conflict. Along with Herb the rest of the 14 project team members should support and deliver their estimated job roles to make ensure the project success. Based on the project background and type of associate stakeholders, communication channels should selected by the company. For this particular project the company should use open communication style. In order to apply this style best of the project management practices are needed to be adopted by them as well. The roles and responsibilities of the project manager, sponsors, line manager and program manager are elaborated in this report. In addition to this, applicable communication tools, context of the communication of Bob, Alice, Frank and Betty, recommended communication tools and techniques are also elaborated in this report.
Reference
Ahuja, V., & Priyadarshini, S. (2015). Effective Communication Management for Urban Infrastructure Projects. In Project Management National Conference, India.
Austin, E. W., & Pinkleton, B. E. (2015). Strategic public relations management: Planning and managing effective communication campaigns (Vol. 10). Routledge.
Buenviaje, M. G., Morcilla, G. P., FernanRefozar, R., Macalalad, J. A., & Laguador, J. M. (2016). Role of Effective Communication in the Organizational Commitment and Employee Behavior as Input to Human Resource Management. Quarterly Journal of Business Studies, 2(4), 193-200.
DeviKrishnaya, S., Jamaludin, K. R., & Ismail, S. (2017). Communication Management during Design Phase in Construction Project. In MASTER PROJECT SYMPOSIUM ON ENGINEERING BUSINESS MANAGEMENT (Vol. 13, p. 29).
Greenaway, K. H., Wright, R. G., Willingham, J., Reynolds, K. J., & Haslam, S. A. (2015). Shared identity is key to effective communication. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41(2), 171-182.
Ham, T. J., Aragón, J. L., & Martonosi, M. (2015, December). DeSC: Decoupled supply-compute communication management for heterogeneous architectures. In Proceedings of the 48th International Symposium on Microarchitecture (pp. 191-203). ACM.
Heagney, J. (2016). Fundamentals of project management. AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn.
Kaiser, M. G., El Arbi, F., & Ahlemann, F. (2015). Successful project portfolio management beyond project selection techniques: Understanding the role of structural alignment. International Journal of Project Management, 33(1), 126-139.
Kerzner, H., & Kerzner, H. R. (2017). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.
Malhotra, N., & Ackfeldt, A. L. (2016). Internal communication and prosocial service behaviors of front-line employees: Investigating mediating mechanisms. Journal of Business Research, 69(10), 4132-4139.
Men, L. R. (2014). Strategic internal communication: Transformational leadership, communication channels, and employee satisfaction. Management Communication Quarterly, 28(2), 264-284.
Mok, K. Y., Shen, G. Q., & Yang, J. (2015). Stakeholder management studies in mega construction projects: A review and future directions. International Journal of Project Management, 33(2), 446-457.
Pritchard, C. (2013). The project management communications toolkit. Artech House.
Sadia, A., Salleh, B. M., Kadir, Z. A., & Sanif, S. (2016). The Relationship between Organizational Communication and Employees Productivity with New Dimensions of Effective Communication Flow. Journal of Business and Social Review in Emerging Economies, 2(2), 93-100.
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