Quasar Communications Inc. is a communications company that is a part of the Communication Systems International, the world’s largest communications company. In spite of the market success, the vice president of the company found out that there are a lot of internal issues that are having negative impact on the projects. When he interviewed some of his project managers, they explained in detail regarding the issues that they are facing during the projects. It is evident from their explanations that there is a lack of sufficient authority on a project and every manager of separate departments act on their own decisions without thinking about the implications on the other departments as well as on the company as a whole.
In this report, the internal and external factors that have impact on the project management processes have been analyzed and suitable strategies have been developed in order to solve these issues.
Impact Analysis for Quasar Communications Inc
Internal and External Factors and their Impact on Project Management Processes
Following the analysis of the case study of Quasar Communications Inc, it can be said that there are several internal and external factors that have significant impact on the project management processes at the company. These factors are discussed as follows.
Internal Factors – Most of the factors that have impact on the project management processes are of internal origin. Following the interview with the project managers, the vice president of the company has found that there are a lot of internal issues that are negatively affecting the project itself. Some of the major factors are listed as follows.
Lack of Proper Leadership: The organization lacks proper leadership that can guide all the departments towards suitable solutions in various problems. Furthermore, an effective leadership also helps the company to have more control over the departments so that they work according to the preset plan only and not operate on their own accord (Kerzner and Kerzner 2017). However, due to lack of proper leadership, different departments function differently with each of the department heads act on their own accord even during the project. Thus the role of project manager is also significantly reduced in the project.
Communication Gap: There is also significant communication gap between the managers of the various departments. As a result, the managers make their own decisions without even consulting other departments that in turn result in abrupt decisions in projects that are not suitable or supported by the other departments.
External Factors – There are also some external factors that have certain impact on the project management processes. These factors are discussed as follows.
Market Image: The company has a huge market value and hence, it cannot afford a failed project even if it means compromising with the quality. As cited by one of the project managers, if there is a possibility of a failed project, the management team reduces the funds from five other projects to invest more in that project (Harrison and Lock 2017). As a result, in place of five successful and one failed project, the company delivers six poor quality projects just to protect their image in the market.
Change Requirements Requested by the Clients: The company values the clients very highly and hence, it is always prepared to incorporate the changes proposed by the clients in the project (Fleming and Koppelman 2016). However, it has been seen that in many projects, during a late stage of the project, the client changed the requirements and in order to implement the changes, the company needed to spend a considerable amount of extra funds just to protect the image in front of the clients.
Strategies to Implement Appropriate Actions
Based on the analysis of the internal and external factors that have significant impact on the project management processes of the company, some strategies can be implemented for taking appropriate actions against the highlighted issues.
Develop a Proper Management Policy – There is a lack of proper policy within the organization regarding who will be the authority in a project. A proper management policy can be adopted in which it will be specified that the stakeholders must always report to the project manager regarding any important decisions failure to do which will attract hard penalties.
Develop Communication Plan – A proper communication plan is to be developed so that different departments contact and consult each other before taking any major decisions (Walker 2015). It should also be added in the policy that before taking any major decision, the stakeholders must communicate with each other through team meetings validating the decision.
Client Management – It is recommended that before the start of a project, the company should sign a detailed contract with the client that if during the project, new changes are requested, the client will be responsible for compensation for the extra expenditure or the company will not be responsible for delivering poor quality outcome in the project.
Communication Plan and Outcomes to Diverse Stakeholders
Communication plan is considered to be policy driven approach associated with providing the stakeholders with all the information associated with the project. The plan would be associated with providing a formal definition of the way of identifying the particular parties who are to be provided with the information, along the defining when the information is to be delivered and what are the communication that are to be used so as to deliver the information.
Usage of the effective communication plan would be associated with anticipating what are the information which needs to be communicated to specific audience segments. The plan would be also be responsible for selection of the appropriate authority who would be associated with communicating the confidential or sensitive information and how all this information are to be disseminated (Vanhoucke 2014).
The plan would also be associated with defining the proper communication channel that is to be used by the stakeholders of QCI so as to solicit the feedbacks and how the communications that are being conducted would be documented and archived. Routine communication needs to be done. This would be including all the information related to the day-to-day communication which would happen. The information included in this section would be including the communication issues being faced, the update status of tasks and many more.
Arranging of weekly meetings with the marketing team and the project managers would be very helpful having all the information that are required in order to decide if to continue with a project or not (Braglia and Frosolini 2014). Besides this if the marketing team of QCI is sharing some of the important information by means of reports or confidential mails with the project manager then the project managers would become capable of deciding if they should dedicate themselves towards a particular project or not.
Establishing a communication line between the line manager and the project manager is also very essential. The line managers should necessarily discuss about the projects before they make promise to the customers. This can be done by arranging meeting with the customers in the presence of the project manager so as to make the project managers aware of the things that are going to be delivered to the customers (Kerzner 2018). Besides in case if the project manager is not present while the meeting is being conducted then the line manager should necessarily be associated with documentation of the requirements of the customers along with the things that is being promised to the customers. This document is to be provided to the project managers so as to make them understand the entire project and what needs to be done so as to deliver the final result as desired by the customer.
So as to make sure that the project is not running behind the schedule and the functional employees are not being pulled off from the project a proper document should be created that is a proper planning is need. Proper planning would be helping in scheduling the tasks and would also be helping in identifying the key performers of the team. It should be made sure that the essentiality of these key performers is being depicted to the higher authorities in a proper way so as to make sure that they are not pulled off during the ongoing project (Arashpour et al. 2017).
Usage of the project management tools would be a very good choice which would be helping in scheduling the task along with helping in distribution of the tasks as well. Proper understanding is also needed between different departments of the organization. This can be done by means of weekly meetings, or tele-conferences, emails and many more.
Conclusion
QCI is facing a number of problems due to the lack of a proper policy or process within the project administrations. There exist many communication gaps in the organization QCI and all these gaps can be addressed by adaptation of a proper communication plan. For change management the communication plan would be playing a very vital role. This plan would be helping in breaking down the resistance to the changes by getting everyone in the same page and helping the stakeholders to become more engaged and endorsed with the need for the changes and the steps which are being taken so as to bring the changes.
Personal Learning Reflection
The course helped me in learning the fact that the enterprise environmental factors are having positive as well as negative effects upon the projects and the organization as well. The EEF can be categorized into two categories, the internal factors and the external factors. The analysis helped me in understanding the fact that there are many EEFs which are likely to affects the projects of QCI as well as the organization. External factors are those which are associated with influencing the project as well as the organization externally.
Internal factors are those factors which pertain inside the projects and have an impact upon the core components of the project. While analyzing the EEF I learnt about the various types of tools that are used for the purpose of conducting the analysis. The tools mainly include the SWOT analysis, PESTLE analysis and many more. I understood the fact that the EEF is associated with bringing positive as well as negative risks. So, for addressing both the type of risk management is used.
Firstly, I have been associated with using the tool PESTLE analysis in order to analyze the organization QCI. The PESTLE analyze is the process by which the political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental condition of the organization. This analysis helped me in the identification of the risk type, frequency of occurrence and lastly the impact of the risks. For each case of risk, the mitigation strategy has also been suggested which can be used by QCI for tackling the risks.
Followed by the PESTLE analysis I have been associated with understanding the stakeholder management which is very essential for the purpose of managing the stake holders existing at different levels so as to make sure that the project is running. Besides this I was also capable of understanding the ways how the global project communication can be managed whenever a project is being executed globally.
I also understood the fact that a proper communication system needs to exist so as to communicate with the other members associated with a project. Some of the effective ways by which global project communication can be managed includes the usage of the central IT system so as to maintain the data, email communication, tele-conferences and many more.
The entire course helped a lot in understanding the project and project management along with the various aspects of the project like the risk management, change management, stakeholder management and many more. I have focusing upon the integration of the project management so as to understand the fact that the project management integration involves various kind of activities like identification, definition, unification and coordination. EEF and their impacts are also clear to me after the completion of the course along with understanding what are the roles that are played by the stakeholders and how the stakeholders can be managed. Besides this I alos understood the fact that for managing the projects it is essential have a good communication plan which would be helping in the avoidance of any kind of conflict.
References
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