石家庄铁道学院毕业论文
is equivalent to that normally obtained in two hours of regular work.
In addition, if project work extends beyond an optimum time, costs increase because people are not working efficiently. Some senior managers believe that if enough people are thrown at a project, it can be completed in whatever time is desired. This is simply not true, the cause of but the idea is
3 The Human Side of Project Management
Many factors affect the success of a project. How well was it planned? Was the problem? Well defined? Was the deadline realistic? Experts agree that there are about ten principal causes of project failure. But what factors leading to success?
One of the key ingredients is having the right people on the job and managing them appropriately. Note the two elements: having the right people and managing them appropriately. Both conditions are frequently violated.
3.1 The Right People
In many organizations, people are assigned to projects because they are available, not because they are necessarily the right choice for the project. Any personnel manager can tell you that staffing should always be done by first analyzing the requirements of the job, then recruiting the individual who best meets those requirements.
However, projects usually operate employees are used on all projects; which it comes time to start a job, whoever is available is in a shared-resource 6 environment. That is, the same assigned. In fact, pulling a person off one project and assigning her to a new one because she is right for the new job will disrupt the first project -- which certainly is not desirable.
3.2 Nevertheless, assigning the wrong person to a project just because she is available makes even less sense. For one thing, it creates the illusion that the project is properly staffed simply because a \
3.3 Plan the project. Planning is answering questions what must be done, by whom, for how much, how, when, and so on. Naturally, answering these questions often requires a crystal ball.
3.4 Execute the plan. Once the plan is drafted, it must be implemented. Interestingly, people sometimes go to great effort to put together a plan, and then fail to follow it. If a plan is not followed, there is not much point in planning, is there?
3.5 Monitor and control progress. Plans are developed so that you can achieve your end result successfully. Unless progress is monitored, you cannot be sure you will succeed.
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石家庄铁道学院毕业论文
It would be like using a roadmap to reach a destination but ignoring the highway signs.
Of course, if a deviation~ from the plan is discovered, you must ask what must be done to get back on track, or if that seems impossible how the plan should be modified to reflect new realities.
3.6 Close the project. Once the destination has been reached, the project is finished, but there is a final step that should be taken. Some people call it an audit, others a post mortem. Whatever you call it, the point is to learn something from what you just did. Note the Close the project. Once the destination has been reached, the project is finished, but way the questions are phrased: What was done well? What should be improved? What else did we learn? We can always improve on what we have done. However, asking \we do wrong?\is likely to make people a bit defensive, so the focus should be on improvement, not on placing blame.
5 The Project Management System
In order to manage projects successfully, it is necessary to have a system. A full project management system consists of seven components, shown in Figure 3. If any one of the seven components is not in place or does not function satisfactorily, then you will have some difficulty managing projects. In fact, most organizations have problems with one or more of the components. Each component is called a subsystem, as it is part of the overall system.
5.1 Human Factors
The pyramid is underpinned by the human subsystem to show that all other subsystems are dependent on this component for support. A project manager must be able to deal effectively with all of the parts of this subsystem in order to be successful. These include:
Leadership Negotiation Team building Motivation Communication Decision making
If there is a deficiency in any of these areas, I suggest that you try to get training in that similarly, negotiation is a must-have set of skills for project managers. It is almost universally true that project managers have significant responsibility but little authority.
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石家庄铁道学院毕业论文
Being able to negotiate with clients for contract terms is sometimes necessary, and you almost always have to negotiate within your organization for scarce resources. In fact, the ability to influence others and the ability to negotiate may well be the two assets that differentiate between effective project managers and poor or mediocre ones.
Knowing how to turn a group into a team is also essential. Teams do not just happen they're built! This is especially true when the members of your team have been assigned temporarily to your project but continue to report to their own managers. They have more loyalty to their managers than to your project, and if you are to gain their commitment and support of your project, you have to know how to influence them and turn them into a team.
While managers cannot actually provide team members with motivation, they must know how to establish working conditions that draw on whatever motivations a person has. Perhaps more important, they must avoid undermining a person's motivation. Management guru, Peter Drunker, and others have observed that many organizations do not have as much trouble with unmotivated employees as they do with the fact that they actually destroy motivation by their management practices and/or job environment.
As an example, when I was in India I was told about a project to build a road. Working conditions were terrible. The temperature was typically 90 degrees Fahrenheit, the food at the site was of poor quality, and morale was very low. To add insult to injury, at night the project manager and his immediate staff stayed in a comfortable hotel.
The project finally got into trouble, and the project manager decided to move to the site full-time. Soon the quality of the food improved, along with working conditions. Morale improved as a result, and soon the project was running smoothly. This project manager had no problem with motivation but had one with de-motivation!
I doubt that there is an organization in the universe that does not have a problem (make that problems) with communication. I know, I know -- we managers do not have communication problems. The entire fault lies with followers who simply don't listen!
How many times have you given people assignments, then found them doing the wrong thing? How many times have they told you they were doing what you had instructed them to do, and you argued that they misunderstood? Lost count?
Unfortunately, it makes no difference what you intended to communicate. It is how the person interprets what you said that governs her behavior, and if she gets wrong you will simply have to get her to redo the work. So it is best to get it right the first time. Again,
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石家庄铁道学院毕业论文
if you have problems communicating with people, get help! Soon!
One related topic if you don't know how to make good presentations on your project, you should improve your presentation skills. You may be running the most successful project in the world, but if you can't convey that point to anyone else, it won't matter. You will be judged on what others think is true, rather than on the facts.
Decision making is the remaining skill you need to be an effective project manager. I refer not only to individual decision making but to knowing when a decision is best made by a group and when by an individual. Until recently, autocratic managers made all decisions. Now we hear about participative management and consensus decision making by teams; in some cases, there has been a reversal, with all decisions being made by team consensus.
This is a misunderstanding of participation. There are times when consensus is mandatory and times when it is not, and the project manager must know when each style of decision making is appropriate.
5.2 Methods
Methods refer to the tools of your trade whatever you use to do the work. For example, CAD computer-aided-design might be a tool. Some form of estimating methodology might be a tool.
5.3 Culture
The culture of an organization affects everything you do. It can best be summed up as \behaviors, and traditions of the people in the company. Note that the corporate culture is affected by ethnic cultures as well.
One factor affecting project managers a great deal is that many organizations are becoming more ethnically multicultural. This has always been a problem for international project managers, and it is a growing problem for managers in the United States, where different team members may think differently and have different values because of their varying cultural backgrounds. If we are to manage these differences, we must, first, be aware of them and, second, respect them. The fact that another person's culture causes him to think differently does not make him wrong, but it will cause confusion in the work place until the difference is dealt with.
For example, a manager told me that he had been trying to manage his group more participative, but an employee from another country had said to him, \
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石家庄铁道学院毕业论文
participative crap! If you want me to do something, just tell me.\
He asked me what to do. I told him to deal with the employee in an autocratic way for now, since that is what he expects and (more important) respects, then to move him gradually toward a participatory style. This is important. You have to deal with people where you find them, then move them to where you want them to be. Trying to deal with them where you want them to be usually fails if the gap is very large.
5.4 Organization
Every organization must deal with the assignment and definition of each person's authority, responsibility, and accountability2~. Too often we see managers trying to delegate responsibility without giving the person any authority. It simply won't work!
5.5 Planning
Good project planning is essential for success. Most American companies, however, do not value planning. Managers talk a lot about planning, but the reality is that they would rather 'do than plan, and it shows. Every organization needs a good methodology for planning projects if it is to be successful.
5.6 Information
Most organizations have problems with information on two counts. Good historical data are needed for planning projects, yet most organizations have not kept good records, so they have poor information about their own histories. This is especially true for cost data. There is a rule in many companies that you cannot go above budget on a project. There is another rule that says you cannot come in under budget, either. To achieve such zero variance, projects that are overspending have charges transferred to those that are under spent, thus contaminating both databases and making the data worthless (actually worse than worthless, because they lead to inaccurate budgeting for future jobs). Note also the need for current information. A lot of companies find this to be a problem. They do not have good management information systems (MIS) for projects, only for inventory, payroll, and manufacturing control. In fact, you may have to set up your own system initially, since information systems departments are often slow to develop what you need (if they do it at all). Fortunately, most scheduling software allows you to enter information and track progress yourself. With laptops, you can transmit data from remote sites easily, so this is not the problem that it once was.
5.7 Control
What are you expected to do as a manager.'? You are expected to get desired
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