Reflection On Principles Of Project Management Assignment

Question

Task: Task Successful completion of this assignment will result in achievement of the following subject learning outcomes:
1. Understand PMBOK knowledge areas and process groups and their role, relevance and impact on project management best practice and PMI’s Code of Ethics.
2. Critically compare and contrast project management approaches and their appropriateness for managing a variety of project types, including IT projects.
3. Apply appropriate project management (including IT project management) tools and techniques, paying particular attention to risk management.
4. Critically reflect on the leadership styles necessary to succeed in a range of project management situations, including in IT project management, and their personal capacity to succeed in those situations.

Answer

Introduction to the project management assignment
I choose the subject project management in my business studies, because I knew so little about the subject, but I had the curiosity of the cat to learn and explore all the layers of the subject. This is my 4thproject management assignmenton this particular module and I can say that not only my learning has enhanced exponentially relating to the concepts of this module in terms of the understanding of Project, tools and techniques used in project management, role of the management and leadership in success/failure of the project, importance of risk management strategy before starting a project, understanding of the project management lifecycle and much more. In this project management assignment, I will take you through the learning curve I developed in the Principles of Project management through Gibbs reflective Cycle.

Description of the Experience
The first project management assignmentwas based on the understanding the competencies of the project manager through analysis of the case study on Victorian Myki Smart Card. The project of the smart card was delayed, which cost over USD 2 Billion dollar to the tax payers of Victoria, made me understand the important of the factors of time, quality and cost in completion of project and that they should never be snubbed. Poorly defined goals, over optimistic expectation with the project and poor corporate governance were the major reasons for the failure of the project. It was the combined mistakes of all the stakeholders involved in the project, especially the project leadership and the Project manager (Dumrak, Baroudi&Hadjinicolaou, 2017).

The second project management assignmentwidened my understanding of the subject in detail wherein I learnt about the knowledge areas of PMBOK, Project selection methods (Both constraint optimization and benefit measurement method). Furthermore, my understanding of the 5 stages of project management cycle was enhanced through further readings and same goes for the project initiation methods. As mentioned earlier that risk plays an important role in the success and failure of the project, hence, understood in depth the types of risks associated with the project and the risk mitigation strategies. In the third project management assignmentwhich was actually a presentation, I implemented the concepts learnt in the initial two assignments to big data implementation project. Hence, the description of my learning experience was filled with learning, insights and also made me understand the nuances of project management (Homayounfard&Safakish, 2016)

Feeling and Evaluation of the Experience
I always knew that Project management is extremely important subject of study, and it holds great potential in terms of employment, hence always took the subject seriously. From the overall analysis on project management assignment, I felt that for the success of the project manager it is extremely important to have a great combination of both the hard and soft skills. For instance, if a project manager has competency only in his domain, then he will not be able to manage his project team and lead them to success. Hence, interpersonal skills, problem solving, decision making skills, risk management skills, strategic planning and leadership skills are some of the most relevant skills which guide the project manager throughout the journey of the project (Luckmann&Feldmann, 2017).

Likewise, it is extremely important for the organization to select the project which not only benefits it, but also provides the organization with an opportunity to effectively execute the big ticket complex projects. Hence, in order to do those organizations have to get deeply involved in project selection methods and by using both the qualitative and quantitative measures of project selection method, they reach to a conclusion. Hence, the study of both the types of project selection methods becomes equally important, as lot of time, money, efforts and other resources are utilized in the project execution and implementation (Niazi, et al., 2016).

Project as we know off is a series of tasks and the tools and techniques which are used to effectively execute the project is called as Project management. This made me understood the importance of all the five stages of the Project management lifecycle, and why the project manager needs to be at the top of the project and project teams to ensure the project is completed within the required time frame, adhering to the project. It was at this moment I also developed my learning of the business case document which can be seen as a preamble to the project as it entail in detail the scope of the project, resource management, project team, the communication plan, the budgeting authority and all of those factors, which makes the document a comprehensive one and keeps all the stakeholders of the project on the same page (Crawford, 2000).

Analysis and Conclusion
A number of things can be drawn in terms of analysis and conclusion of my learning experience keeping in mind how expanse the subject is, therefore has a lot to learn in order to seek out job in the role of a project manager or allied job roles. I would say that, the success or failure of the project is the responsibility of the Project manager. But, a project should be seen as big machinery, wherein every individual in the machinery has an important role to play. And any gap in any of the machinery will make the efforts of all the parts extremely futile. The implication is that the motivation, management and the empowerment of the project teams is equally important and one of the main drivers for the successful completion of the project.

Next major analysis comes in the area of risk management in the context of implementing and executing the project on project management assignment. And it has been seen that majority of the project which fail to succeed in terms of its deliverables comes from the lack of understanding and the depth of the concept of risk management. A number of internal and external factors are present in the project which needs to be identified, ascertained and evaluated and a suitable risk management strategy has to be put in place. Else, any of the risk such as the Technology, financial, human resources, scope, scheduling can put the entire project in jeopardy, as happened with the case of Victoria MyKi smart card project. PMI code of ethics made me accustomed to the body which serves as the standard benchmark to ensure the best possible decisions concerning the resources, environment and its people (Willis, 2015)

It is stated in this analysis on project management assignment that many times the project is either so complex or so simple that one has to identify the approaches for the project management they need to adopt in order to execute the project. One has to make a relative comparison between different techniques such as Agile, lean, Kanban, Waterfull, Scrum and others for the execution of the project management. As despite the fact that all of these project management approaches are complete in themselves, they are to be applied in different context. Hence it becomes the job of project manager to be able to choose the best approach which will save time and cost of the project whilst ensuring the deliverables of the project (Kimmons, 1990).

Action Plan
This is the last section of the reflection on project management assignment and the most important one, actually. There is no point of reflection, if one cannot apply the learning’s in real life or create an action plan based on the strength and the weakness in the subject. For me, I believe that I have good interpersonal skills, communication skills and employee motivation skills. But that is not enough, I need to develop my competencies in developing more core understanding of the Project management approach, because I see a gap in my learning in that section. Hence, in order to do that, I have decided to give 30 minutes of my time daily on reading literature on the project management approaches, and learn from the best case studies about the implementation of the said approaches.

Next, from the overall analysis on project management assignment, I believe that in order to become an effective project manager, one needs to understand the group dynamics of the team. As in what are the phases of team development such as the norming, forming, storming, performing and adjourning and how these steps are to be implemented at the team level. So this also I have decided to study in depth. Next, I have also decided to further improve upon my leadership style of a project manager, which requires a lot of time and practice. But, it is extremely essential, as I have finally decided to make my career in the project management industry and one day I would like to see myself, working and leading a project team, managing all the stakeholders effectively, careful strategic planning of the project with the risk identified and strategies made to overcome them and more so. Hence, in order to accomplish this dream, I have to expedite my efforts in terms of learning both in terms of theoretical perspective as well as practical perspective.

References
Dumrak, J., Baroudi, B., &Hadjinicolaou, N. (2017).Exploring the association between project management knowledge areas and sustainable outcomes. Project management assignmentProcedia Engineering, 182, 157-164.

Retrieved from:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877705817312882/pdf?md5=1f68224a460735e751fcbe024a4cc152&pid=1-s2.0-S1877705817312882-main.pdf [Retrieved on 8 August 2020] Homayounfard, H., &Safakish, G. (2016).A human resource evaluation toolkit for mega size industrial projects. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 226, 209-217. Retrieved from:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042816308679/pdf?md5=8cb68213b313fdff34b343251af5d5c9&pid=1-s2.0-S1877042816308679-main.pdf&_valck=1 [Retrieved on 8 August 2020]

Lückmann, P., &Feldmann, C. (2017). Success factors for business process improvement projects in small and medium sized enterprises–empirical evidence. Procedia computer science, 121, 439-445. Retrieved from:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877050917322524/pdf?md5=4bafe72673844adeb0855ae3ae2711d3&pid=1-s2.0-S1877050917322524-main.pdf&_valck=1 [Retrieved on 24 June 2020]

Niazi, M., Mahmood, S., Alshayeb, M., Qureshi, A. M., Faisal, K., &Cerpa, N. (2016).Toward successful project management in global software development. International Journal of Project Management, 34(8), 1553-1567. Retrieved from:https://www.skylineuniversity.ac.ae/pdf/software-engineering/SOFTWARE%20PROJECT%20MANAGEMENT%20A%20CONCISE%20STUDY.pdf [Retrieved on 8 August 2020]

Crawford, L. (2000). Profiling the Competent Project Manager. Researchgate.net. Kimmons, R. L. (28 Jun 1990). Project Management Basics: A Step by Step Approach. CRC Press.

WIllis, R. (2015, december 29). your project manager.Project management assignmentRetrieved from https://yourprojectmanager.com.au/4-massive-australian-project-failures-failed/