Projects are considered to be successful when they complete within boundaries of its scope, cost, quality and time. Every project is completed but not every project becomes successful. Some aspects that affect the success of project include cost overrun and schedule overruns. Cost overruns are found to be the most common cause for failure of a project. Hence it is important for organizations to implement better ideas as well as framework and methodologies in the process of project management (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017). Behavior of people is an important factor which drives the success of project. Nowadays virtual teams are formed in order to execute a project; this team includes project members who are far away from each other. In this case, the project managers are supposed to understand as well as maintain the behavior, culture and emotions of the project members.
This assignment describes regarding various experiences of project management behavior. The experiences include good, bad and ugly. These experiences individually include description of the case, its critical reflection which states why is it good, bad or ugly and at last it states the learning’s from the experiences.
Engagement of team members is an important factor that should be considered in order to make a project successful. Every member involved in a project should be treated equally and equal importance should be provided to everyone. I had a personal experience regarding this fact. I was undergoing an internship and after providing training for an entire week, we were provided with a project (Kerzner, 2018). All the interns were divided into small groups. The members were divided on the basis of their specialization. Every member was divided with their own specific task. The main focus for executing the project effectively was to set a specific indicator for setting key productivity or performance. This helped out team top perform as a whole. The engagement of stakeholders as well as team was monitored and more strategies were planned which could increase the engagement of members.
Personal and emotional expectations of our team members were addressed in order to bring out the best in us. At the end of every day we were asked some questions like “How are we doing in the project”, “how helpful is our workload for executing the project efficiently?”, “do we feel good on working on the project” and many more (Leach, 2014). The project leader ensured that our personal objectives connect with the organizational objectives. The team members were allowed to interact freely among themselves and the project leader played equal role in executing the project. The project leader did not act partially with specific members; he had behaved similarly with every member. We were allowed to approach to the team member whenever we faced any problem while carrying out the project.
Figure 1: People’s Placement in the Circle of Project Management
(Source: Nicholas & Steyn, 2017, p. 98)
The experience mentioned above was a good one. According to me, in this case, we were supported enough by the team leader. Interaction among the entire group including the supervisors, team leaders and the members have been maintained (Verzuh, 2015). All the members were very supportive and cooperative while carrying out the project. The leaders and supervisors provided equal attention while explaining the project to us or when we needed help during the execution of the project. The questions that were asked to us after each day’s work made everyone feel important and needed. Even being interns we were asked for suggestions to make the project successful.
The lessons learnt from the experience are as follows
The actual problem of a specific project is not the plan of the project or it technical aspects. The actual problems stand on the regular contact with team members. In most of the cases, communication stands as a major barrier and tends to pose a serious threat to various project managers (Svejvig & Andersen, 2015). I did not have a personal experience regarding a communication problem in an organization but according to my research it can be said that at any time during the lifecycle of project, there might be present thousands of communication channel present in the group. This communication channels might be present among members, members and supervisors, and between many more categories of employees. Communication channels provide employees a specific opportunity to people in order to exchange data within each other (Kivilä, Martinsuo & Vuorinen, 2017). I have read regarding the communication in an organization.
Most of the companies have various departments and these departments operate efficiently but there is lack of communication. This leads to a communication gap between the members and departments. The gap leads to misunderstanding among the members and inefficiency in their performance (Laudon & Laudon, 2016). The employees are needed to be blend in order to talk to the proper stakeholders, gain and buy-in work along the initiation of project. The project managers need to believe as well as understand that they need to take initiations in opening the channels of project management. Unless and until the project managers and supervisors do not tale initiative to communicate with the employees, they would feel uncomfortable in opening up and sharing their thoughts.
In this case, the communication plays an important role for the proper functioning of employees. The key factor than can never be avoided in order to make a specific project a successful one is communication. Communication is the medium which is cleared can reduce a lot of effort that is put in dissolving misunderstandings. The lack of communication in an organization can lead to failure of projects irrespective of the number of members and effort that was put on in executing the project. Any sort of effort or strategy would fail in making a project successful if the communication is not full proof. The lack of communication can result to bad experiences.
Various lessons learnt learn from the communication factor of an organization are as follows
Emotions have the ability to drive employees in both positive as well as negative ways. Various emotions include happiness, anger, sadness, scary and many more. Understanding the emotions of the employees is very important for an organization as well as project managers and supervisors (Portny, 2017). Respecting the emotions and sentiments of an employee is very important for an organization. A personal, ugly experience regarding this would be discussed in this part of the assignment.
I have worked for an organization after my graduation. We were 10 in a group. Among us there were people who belonged to different traditions, cultures, religion and many more aspects. Once during the occasion of Id Ul Fitr, the company was going through its extreme peak season and the employees who belonged to the Muslim religion asked for an off on the day of occasion. The employees were not given any off or leave. They asked to shift their scheduled week off on the day of occasion. The management team did not allow that as well. The employees had requested a lot regarding a leave on that day but none of them was allowed to take a leave and instead the project manager as well as supervisor had hurt the sentiments of the employees. They have abused the religion and the employees belonging to that religion. This made the employees furious and they resigned immediately. This experience had been an ugly one and created a bad impact on the image and reputation of the employees. A project manager should be able to manage the emotional as well as technical factors.
I feel this experience is an ugly one because here project leaders and supervisors have discriminated some people regarding their religion. They were not provided with a holiday on their occasions. This should not be the way how employees are treated. All the employees should be treated equally and every must have some benefits that should be available for them irrespective of the peak or lean season of the organization.
From this ugly experience it can be learnt that feelings, actions and moods have an impact on the way by which stakeholders and various team members to carry out their work in numerous projects as well as on the management of emotional aspects (Conforto, Amaral, da Silva, 2016). The management of emotions is very vital for a project management to succeed. A project manager who is good at his work should be not only good at technical works but also should be able to manage emotional factors. In case both the aspects are not managed it is difficult for an organization to carry out a successful project management. This would also lead to a high cost incurred than what has been planned. Usually organizations do not concentrate on the emotional factors of employees but completely avoiding them can result in bringing about a nightmare for the project manager. Sentiments regarding religion, cast ritual an beliefs of the employees (Bolman & Deal, 2017). This creates a negative impact on the project manager, organization and its image. This project management behavior should be maintained in every organization.
Conclusion
From the above assignment it can be concluded that the project management behavior is very important for an organization to perform effectively. In order to perform in an effective way and result in success of the project, the project managers should consider that there is no sole book of the ways to behave properly with employees. Project managers must be able to manage thousands of interactions among people within a specific project as well as outside it. The emotional bonding among the individuals should be understood as well as recognized in order to receive best from the employees. This is quite crucial in order to achieve a good level of communication, teamwork as well as performance. These factors are very necessary in carrying out a project successfully. In thus assignment some experiences have been discussed and some findings received from various studies have also been discusses. The experiences are regarding the facts that I have faced during by internship and a job at an organization. It can be said that project t management behavior is very important for a specific project to be successful. The success of a project as a result affects the overall performance of the organization.
Various experiences regarding good, bad and ugly experiences of project management behavior has been discussed in the report above. The experiences include description of the case, critical reflection of the experience and the lessons learnt from it.
References
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Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2017). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership. John Wiley & Sons.
Conforto, E. C., Amaral, D. C., da Silva, S. L., Di Felippo, A., & Kamikawachi, D. S. L. (2016). The agility construct on project management theory. International Journal of Project Management, 34(4), 660-674.
Gemünden, H. G. (2015). Success factors of global new product development programs, the definition of project success, knowledge sharing, and special issues of project management journal®. Project management journal, 46(1), 2-11.
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Kerzner, H., & Kerzner, H. R. (2017). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.
Kivilä, J., Martinsuo, M., & Vuorinen, L. (2017). Sustainable project management through project control in infrastructure projects. International Journal of Project Management, 35(6), 1167-1183.
Laudon, K. C., & Laudon, J. P. (2016). Management information system. Pearson Education India.
Leach, L. P. (2014). Critical chain project management. Artech House.
Nicholas, J. M., & Steyn, H. (2017). Project management for engineering, business and technology. Routledge.
Portny, S. E. (2017). Project management for dummies. John Wiley & Sons.
Reed, A. H., & Angolia, M. (2018). Risk Management Usage and Impact on Information Systems Project Success. International Journal of Information Technology Project Management (IJITPM), 9(2), 1-19.
Schwalbe, K. (2015). Information technology project management. Cengage Learning.
Svejvig, P., & Andersen, P. (2015). Rethinking project management: A structured literature review with a critical look at the brave new world. International Journal of Project Management, 33(2), 278-290.
Verzuh, E. (2015). The fast forward MBA in project management. John Wiley & Sons.
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