Write short notes on the TWO (2) of the following:
i) Project Manager – main responsibilities and desired traits
Project manager is a person in an organization who has a sole responsibility of handling the project and achieving the objectives stated. The main responsibilities are planning, organizing and controlling. He also has to make decisions on the constraints of time, cost and quality to achieve the desired results. He should also make sure that team members under him complete the task in desired time.
A manager should have expertise knowledge about the work to perform, should be a good communicator, should have empathy, team building skills, problem solving skills, Focus on motivation and not intimidation i.e. treat people as human beings but not just resources etc.
ii) Project Organization – types and their suitability for implementing various types of organization
Project organization makes an alignment between the project and the parent company to deliver or complete the project effectively and efficiently. There are three types of project organization:
1. Functional organization: In this part of project is assigned to various functions of company such as marketing, product development, sales etc so that specialist would do their part of work. It is mainly used when one functions plays dominant role in completion of project.
2. Pure project organization: this is referred as creation of separate project teams to complete task. This is unit which is self independent and has own staff to do work that is own team of people. The organization is developed in such a way that functional department helps the project teams in their work.
3. Matrix organization: this organization structure is a combination of functional and pure project organization both. This type of structure optimizes the use of resources available with the company. The boundaries between the project team and functional units is not very strict hence make it flexible which makes it more popular among the firms to use this structure but decision making process is very slow in this type of structure as various functional departments and project group should agree for the work to make it inot action.
iii) Evaluation of Public Sector Projects – Benefit – Cost Ratio and the Cost Effectiveness Criteria
Benefit-Cost Ratio
Benefit-cost analysis, is the economic decision making approach, which is used particularly in the government & business. Benefit-cost analysis is used in assessment of either the proposed project, programme or the policy is worth doing or for choosing between so many alternative ones. This involves comparing total expected costs of every option against total expected benefits, for seeing whether benefits outweigh the costs and by how much. In Benefit-cost analysis, the benefits & costs are expressed in the money terms and are adjusted for time value of money so that all flows of the benefits & flows of the project costs over time are expressed on the common basis in the terms of their present value.
Benefit-Cost Ratio = Equivalent Users’ Net Benefits / Equivalent Sponsors’ Net Cost
When the Benefit-Cost Ratio exceeds 1 then the project may be justified
Cost-Effectiveness Criteria
The Cost-effectiveness analysis is the form of economic analysis which compares relative costs & outcomes of two or more courses of the action. Cost-effectiveness analysis is distinct from the cost-benefit analysis that assigns the monetary value to measure of effect. Cost-effectiveness analysis is mostly used in field of the health services, where this can be inappropriate for monetizing health effect.
Cost Effectiveness Criteria
• The cost-effectiveness method allows us for comparing the projects on basis of the cost & nonmonetary effectiveness measures.
• We can either maximize effectiveness for the given cost criterion or minimize cost for the given effectiveness criterion.
[20 marks]
What is meant by the Work-Breakdown-Structure? Give some example.
It is a simple way to express the full project in graphical way. This makes the project easier to understand and communicate. The whole project is broken down into tasks, each of which has a manager, an institution, costs and schedule & technical scope. The Work-Breakdown-Structure begins with a single box at the top which signifies the whole project. The project is then broken down into its components with lower level boxes. The major role of the WBS is first to divide the whole project deliverables into smaller parts to improve the accuracy of cost forecasts or estimates, secondly to provide a procedure for collecting, organizing and managing actual costs and thirdly to provide a means for control & performance measurement. But it shouldn’t be mistaken as the system that deals with schedules and thus has time dimension, instead it is used as entry criteria for schedule enlargement and improvement. Thus we can say WBS charts a project in a simple map of what is to be produced.
What are the various Project Control mechanisms / techniques. Briefly discuss.
Project controlling has been established as an independent function of Project Management and provides a detailed plan of activities and deliverables that need to be controlled and measured to assure the achievement of proposed solution while maintaining the set quality standards and time limits. It begins with project planning and ends with post-implementation review, being thoroughly involved at each step in the process.
Project control mechanism includes formal infrastructure, transparency among project processes and a proper communication system to maintain smooth flow of right information and to avoid disparity in project parameters. The various techniques of project controlling are:
• Investment analysis: this helps in analyzing whether an investment is suitable for a particular project and how it shall perform. It is a look back on the past investment and a thought process of mainly future investments.
• Cost-benefit analysis: it is an economic decision making approach for the purpose of assessing whether a proposed project is worth undertaking. It involves the comparison of total expected cost against the total expected benefits of the alternatives.
• Value benefit Analysis: A useful tool for preparing systematic decisions. It measures the effectiveness rather than the efficiency of a solution while working on a project.
• Expert surveys: a reliable way of quality of work of a project.
• Simulation calculations: it studies the random failure times and combines it with the reliability of the solution while working on a project and then the overall results are analyzed to determine the behavior of the whole project.
• Trend analysis: In project management, trend analysis is a quality control tool and a technique that uses historical or past results to measure or forecast the future results.
[20 marks]
Write brief notes on:
a. Role of leadership in project management
A project manager must also be a strong and confident leader. Leadership is a great quality, trait or characteristic that a person can have. Project managers and decision makers are required to display leadership in various aspects in their work and jobs. This is so because when we work with people or in a team, someone has to take the initiative to coordinate and synchronize in such a way that it is possible for the team to move forward as a whole. Leadership is a quality possessed by a person that enables him to motivate and influence people. It is not about dominating, but about winning consensus. Leadership is thus a trait that helps obtain support for accomplishment of a common goal. Effective leadership is concerned not just a science, but an art and also a philosophy. Leadership can be considered to be effective in case of the leader being able to take the team ahead and create a common vision which stimulates and synergizes the channelizing of the efforts of all of the employees and managers towards the common vision or common goals of the organization. Leadership is an extremely essential and important trait required for efficient and effective management. It cannot be refuted that good governance requires effective leadership in order to be able to manage people and direct or channelize their efforts in the required direction. This makes leadership eccentric to the core of management as well as the tools that helps influence and motivates people to give in their best.
b. Team building – strategic elements
Team building, from the strategic perspective requires cultural convergence and this can be achieved through cross cultural training. Cross cultural training has an important role in case of the strategic function mainly because in order to communicate the information, especially obtained from management accounting to the top management and other workers and employees. It becomes important to have a common language as well as a common understanding about how each of the employees would perceive information about different aspects. Moreover it also becomes important to assess and understand the work methods and styles of the top management in order to provide them with relevant information and also to be able to understand their point of views and judgments as well as decisions. In this way cross cultural training and an understanding about other cultures has an important role to play even in case of accounting and several other strategic functions. It is extremely important that the firm considers human resource aspects while designing and using information systems and prioritizes it over the compliance element as human resources are a very important function in every business. Acquisition and retention of human resources is a very big challenge for every firm or business. Improving the talent pools' skills and enhancing their value is essential in order to remain dynamic and ever-improving. This helps every firm achieve its strategies and long term goals. The talent pool can be improved through the usage of a number of human resource development techniques including training and development. Cross functional teams and seminars as well as techniques of improvement on the job as well as off the job can be used.
c. Project termination – essential steps
Project termination means that closing the project which occur when the project is successfully completed or either shut down before completion due to early warning signs to the company.
Various steps that are needed to take to terminate the project are:
First of all the required payments to any of the concerned person is to be done whether supplier, vendors etc. after making payments responsibilities are transferred to other if required and the duties are reassigned to those people who were involved in doing the project so that they can be involved in order to perform other duties.
The resources if left over should be released while terminating the project such as raw materials or any other. Books related to bills, costs should be completed or closed when the project is terminated. After this the results of the project should be compiled and the recommendation to make better in future time period should be made so the opportunity can be taken and risk can be avoided. In the last step the presentation should be made and should be communicated whether the project is accepted or rejected.
If the project is accepted then it should be installed and if it is rejected then the reasons should be determined so as to keep in mind for any future reference or to know the changes required.
[20 marks]
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