Exploration of Most Efficient Environment in Project Management

In today’s world, project management has become so popular that it plays a vital role in the success of different organizations. Project management is the process of planning, organizing, assigning tasks, regulating and communicating to achieve specific goals in a specific period. There are many competitors in different areas of the existing markets that require proper managerial and decision-making skills to achieve goals in an efficient manner. After being selected as the Senior Project Manager, I was entrusted with gathering and guiding a team to build an advanced and creative printer. I was given 17 weeks to gather a team to build a high-speed level 3 printer with a limited weekly budget and below are the steps I took as the manager.

As the senior project manager, my primary objective was to achieve my goal within the timeframe that was scheduled by the management. Abyad (2018), highlights that the essential purpose of project management should be the accomplishment of the goals assigned to them. I started out my project by targeting to complete the project in 15 weeks and hiring three employees who were skilled medium-high with extensive outsourcing. It is necessary to analyze the outcomes of being unable to hand over the project on time and within the financial plan (as cited in Paver & Duffield, 2019). I also encouraged overtime as I set up deadlines for developing three prototypes every two weeks. According to Collier and Lambert (2019), updating management with advanced information is a crucial part of risk management. I arranged standup or review status meetings every three weeks to keep in track of where we were headed. Collier and Lambert (2019), suggest that organizing new and engaging activities over the course of the task can help learn to propose newer and easier ways to conclude the tasks. For the first four weeks, the number of employees and their skill level remained the same that caused our team’s morale to be mildly stressed as they were working around 48 hours per employee.

In week 5, we were informed that our competitor was releasing their product (level 3 high-speed printer) five weeks ahead of the former managerial target. This caused our team to stress as we were under the pressure of releasing our product within the next eight weeks. However, I saw this as an opportunity to produce a more advanced product which was the multifunction level 4 printer using the Maturity Model. According to Bento, Gomes, and Romao (2019), Maturity Models contribute steps to allow the recognition of newer opportunities in the market in project management tasks. Maturity Models are defined as schemes that provide companies with managerial strategies that they can benefit from. I called upon a meeting in week 6, to review our status and discuss the future of our project. In the context of project management, this can be considered as a lesson to the team that should be thoroughly discussed and recognized which is commonly referred to as the “elephant in the room” which signifies a problem (Paver & Duffield, 2019). Furthermore, I hired an extra employee with the same skill level to join our team to help us attain our goals faster. This required a one on one coaching to inform the new employee about the progression of our project and to grant him a head start as well. Coaching is a very important characteristic of a leader that helps his followers or rather the employees to face any sorts of difficulties (Wenu & Tan, 2019). According to Abyad (2018), a manager is required to define other's desires which can help with self-development resulting in yielding maximum productivity.

From week 7 to week 12, our team put in a lot of effort and worked 52 hours per person every week and produced improvised prototypes that lead us one step closer to our design. As we entered week 13, we knew that we were past our scheduled week and time did not matter as much as the quality of our product even though we were over our budget. Employees are more motivated when their financial needs are met through money and other motivating factors resulting in them working harder, improvising the prototypes and trying to achieve the assigned tasks as soon as possible (as cited in Abyad, 2018). Organizing another meeting to analyze our position in week 13 was compulsory as Abyad (2019), suggests that most of the projects fail when there is little to no communication between the senior managers and their employees which could potentially rise complications. A study showed that most of the employees wanted meetings to be held and coaching sessions to be administered by their management (Wenu & Tan, 2019). This shows that communication plays a decisive role not only in the success of a project but also in the development of an organizational unit.

Due to the shortage of money, our society allows efficient, cost-effective and innovative project management processes (Tereso, Ribeiro, Fernandes, Loureiro, & Ferreira, 2019). It is also unethical to put our organization in a financial crisis because of not being able to achieve our goal. This led me to drop down the number of employees by one every week until we reached a maximum of two employees. This not only motivated the other employees but also dropped their stress levels due to internal competition amongst themselves. According to Bento et al. (2019), enforcing changes by looking at the current progress rate and team situation is an effective project management practice. It is crucial for project managers working with their assistants towards a common goal, go through some managerial practices to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the team at different times (Bento et al., 2019). No meetings were held in the last weeks of our project as we were very close to our goal and meetings would result in a waste of time. The project ended with us releasing a successful level 4 multifunction printer in the market with a week ahead of the expected completion week and most importantly, being in high spirits.

In conclusion, project management has become a crucial part of an organization during this time of advancement. Without this, the success rates of the plans and projects have a high potential of dropping low. Identification of scenarios is an important step in a project manager’s journey which will help him with decision making and critical thinking throughout the process. Project management has a tough and challenging environment which will demand leadership skills to some extent. My project planning discussed above was not the best, however, we achieved a better model of our product in lesser time than expected which means that there will always be room for improvement.