Project Management Final Exam Chapter 7

Issues with competence and motivation

-Although Jamie was assigned to work on the just-in-time training project from its start, she was on vacation for most of the first month and seemed uninterested in the project when she was around. -Kristin tried her best to motivate Jamie, but Jamie was simply not the right person for the project. -Kristin talked to Jamie directly (using the confrontation approach), and Jamie admitted that she would much rather deal directly with suppliers the work on this project. -Kristin replaced Jamie with someone more suitable.

Poor conflict management

-Most large projects are high-stake endeavors that are highly visible within organizations. -When the stakes are high, conflict is never far away, and even small projects with low budgets have conflicts ----- it is a natural part of work and life in general *Projects managers should lead their teams in developing norms for dealing with various types of conflicts that might arise.

Motivation

-Project managers must understand motivation theories to effectively execute projects. -Psychologists, managers, coworkers,teachers, parents,and most people in general still struggle to understand what motivates people, or why they do what they do -Intrinsic motivation: Causes people to participate in an activity for their enjoyment. Intrinsic motivation: Causes people to do something for a reward or to avoid a penalty. Extrinsinsic motivation: Causes people to do something for a reward or to avoid a penalty. -Maslow suggestes that people's behaviors are guided or motivated by a sequence of needs.

Common Problems During Execution

-The project sponsor and/or other senior managers are not very supportive of the project. *Project stakeholders, such as people who would use the products and services the project is attempting to create, are not sufficiently involved in project decision-making. *The project manager is inexperienced in managing people, working in a particular organization, or understanding the application area of the project. *The project objectives /scope are unclear. *Estimates for time and cost goals are unreliable or unrealistic *Business needs /technology changes have impacted the project *People working on the project are incompetent and unmotivated. *There are poor conflict-management procedures. *Communications are poor *Suppliers are not delivering as promised

Maslow's Hierachy of Needs

1. Physiological: Air, water, food 2. Safety: Shelter, lack of physical or mental abuse, low-crime environment 3. Social: Friendship, group belonging, a sense of community 4. Esteem: Personal achievement , recognition, respect 5.Self-actualization: Sense of fullfillment, working to full potential

Sample Work performance Data

A common way to summarize work performance information is by usung a milestone report. *Recall that a milestone is a significant event on a project, such as completing a major deliverable or awarding a major contract *In addition to listing the milestones, the report lists the planned date for completion( in month/day format), the status , the person responsible for the milestone, issues/comments.

Issue Logs

An issue log helps to dicument, monitor, and track issues that need to be resolved for effective work to take place. *An issue is a matter under question or dispute that could impede project success *Issues can hurt tema performance, so it is important to take action to resolve them. *A critical issues is anything that prevents progress on scheduled activities. If the activity is on the critical path, resolution is urgent. There shoould be an issues escalation process that ensures issues resolution action.

Quality Improvement Tools and Techniques

Benchmarking: Generates ideas for quality improvements by comparing specific project practices or products characteristics to those of other projects or products within or outside of the organization itself (For example, training costs per employee and course rating are benchmarks) *Quality audit : is a structured review of specific quality management activities that help identify lessons learned, which could improve performance in current or future projects Process analysis: Involves analyzing how a process operates and determining improvements. *Many organizations use lean, a system based on the toyota production system to help improve results and efficiency by eliminating waste and reducung idle time and non-value added activities. *Kanban is a visual technique used to imorove workflow. *Cause- and-effect diagrams: also called fishbone diagrams( because their structure resembles a fishbone) or ishikawa diagrams ( named after their founder)- can assist in ensuring and improving quality by finding the root causes of quality problems.

Conflict Handling modes, in preference Order

Blake and Mouton(1964) delineated five basic modes for handling conflicts. Each strategy can be considered as being high, medium, or low on two dimensions: the importance of the tasks or goal, and the importance of the relationship between the people having the conflict(High/low, medium/medium. and so on) --- Confrontation or problemsolvingn :Directly face a conflict (high/high) ---compromise/Reconcile:Use a give -and -take approach (medium/medium) --smooth/Accomodate:De-emphasize area of differences and emphasized area of agreement (low/high) --Force/Direct: The win-lose approach(high/low) ---Withdrawal/avoid: Retreat or withdraw from an actual or potential disagreement (low/low) --- Collaborating : Decision makers incorporate different viewpoints and insights to develop consensus ams commiment.

More on Conflict

Conflict can be good: it often produces important results, such as new ideas, better alternatives, and motivation to work harder and more collaboratively. *Project team members might become stagnant or develop" groupthink" - conformance to the values or ethical standards of a group if there are no conflicting viewpoints in various aspects of a project. *Research suggests that: Task-relatedd conflict, which is derived from differences over team objectives and how to achieve them, often improves team performance. *Emotional conflict, however, which stems from personality clashes and misunderstandings, often depresses team performance.

Work Performance Data

During project execution,Project managers must collect, assess and communicate work performance information, *Many project managers, like Kristin, use the "management by wandering around" (MBWA) approach, meaning they informally observe and talk to project team members, suppliers, and other stalkholders as musch as possible *Kristin alsi used formal communications, such as status reports, survey results, and course evaluations , to address work perfomance on the project.

Project Resource management

Effective use of resources is crucial to project execution. The main processes project managers perform include acquiring resources, developing the team, and managing the team. Key outputs include physical resource assignments, project team assignments, resource calendars, team performance assessments, change requests, and updates to the project management plan, enterprise environmental factors, and organizational process assets. *Resource calendars are simply calendars for each resource showing work assignment dates.

Herzber's Motivational and hygiene factors

Frederick Herzberg wrote several famous books and articles about worker motivation. He distinguished between the following: - Motivational factors: factors that cause job satisfaction, such as achievement, recognition, the work itself, responsibility, advancement, and growth. Hygiene Factors: Factors that cause dissatisfaction of not present, but do not motivate workers to do more. Examples:

What went wrong?

Groupthink can cause problems in projects. Forbes Coaches Council provided a list of ten negative effects of groupthink: 1. common responses to threats, such as everyone becoming more risk-averse under pressure 2. Limits and inclusion, where people feel safe yet closed-minded by not having diverse ideas. 3. Focusing only on what is known, which can cause critical information to be uncovered 4. The "Corporate nod", prevents transparent and truthful conversation 5. Extinction, where the entire project is dissolved for not being able to address changing dynamics 6. Blind commitments to best practices, which can prevent taking new approaches when needed 7. Lack of engagement, causing some workers to feel unheard and underappreciated 8.Disasters,like the financial crisis caused by blind trust in financial institutions 9. Drowned-out voices, caused by the most vocal people drowning out potentially great ideas 10.Over confidence in your decision,because everyone supports it, even though they shouldn't

Best Practice

In the late 1940s, Toyota engineers noticed that grocery store clerks restocked items by their store's inventory instead of their vendor's supply. Their "Just-in-time" approach of ordering more items only when they were neat sellouts sparked the engineers to pioneer a new approach to engineering using a Kanban system by matching inventory with demand to achieve better throughput. (The word kanban is Japanese for sign). In 2005 David J Anderson, a founder of the Agile movement and author of several books, visited Japan. While visiting Tokyo's imperial palace gardens, he realized that kanban was used at the gardens to manage the flow of visitors and that it could be applied to many.

Deliverables

Most project sponsors would sat that the most important output of any project is its deliverables *Recall that deliverables are products or services produced or provided as part of a project. *For the just-in-time Training project at global construction, key deliverables include: *Training materials and courses ( instructor-led, Web-based, and CD-Rom) *Deliverables relates to developing and delivering those traingin materials, amd courses, such as surveys, design documents, prototypes, and meetings

Implementes Solutions to problems

Of course, all project teams face numerous problems -Some problems can be avoided by doing a good job of initiating, planning, or monitoring and controlling the project, but other problems cannot be avoided. _Some common problems encountered during project execution are described in this chapter, but project managers must be creative and flexible in dealing with problems that occur on their projects.

Change Requests

Often, a number of requests for changes emrege during project execution. *Recall that a process for handling changes should be defined during project planning as part of the project manangement plan. *It is important during project execution to formally and informally request appropriate changes.

Managing Quality

Quality Assurance: Includes all the activities related to satisfying the relevant quality standards for a project *Another Goal of quality assuranceis aa continual quality improvement *Key outputs if managing quality includes a quality report, test and evaluation documents, change requests, project manangement plan updates, and project documents updates.

Managing Project knowledge

The new process, main output is a lesson learned register Two types of knowledge: Explicitknowledge: This type of knowledge can be easily explained using words, pictures, or numbers and is easy to communicate, store, and distribute. Examples include information found in textbooks and encyclopedias as well as project documents and plans. Tacit knowledge: Unlike explicit knowledge, tacit knowledge, sometimes called informal knowledge, is difficult to express and is highly personal. Examples include beliefs, insight, and experience. It os often shared therough conversations and interations between people. Many organizations set up rpograms like mentorships, communities of practice, or workshops to assist in passing in tacit knowledge.

Project Integration Management

To direct and manage project stakeholders,project manangers can follow several important practices: *Coordinate planning and execution *Develop and use soft skills *Provide a supportive organizational culture. *Break the rules when needed *Capitalize on product, business, and application are knowledge *Use project execution tools and techniques *Main ouputs during execution are deliverables, work performance data, issue logs,change requests, project management plan updates, project documents updates, and organizational process assets updates.