1. Project Management BBA & MBA
Lecture 789
Project Initiation
Project Manager: The Man Responsible for Project Success
Course Lecturer: Farhan Mir

3. High-level Project Organization Chart
Senior Leadership
Project Leadership
Project Work Teams
Sponsor
Advisory or Steering Team
Project Leader
Project Manager
Core Team
Functional Team
Serve as champions for the project and provide high-level direction, authority, decision-making and resources for the project.
Supports the sponsor(s) and project leader. Provides high-level direction, input, and decision making.
Provides the subject matter expertise and day-to-day planning and implementation for the respective functional area(s). Resolves issues and escalates when required.
Provides project management, process improvement, and change management process expertise, tracking, and reporting.
Provides subject matter expertise and functional ownership and accountability for project results.
Provides day-to-day leadership for the planning, implementation, and closing of the project. Resolves issues and escalates when required. Assesses change management needs and develop strategies. Implements communication plan. Leads the individual functional teams.
Project Resources
Critical resources that can be brought in as subject matter experts as needed.
Executive Sponsor

4. Roles of a PM Manager Facilitator Communicator
oversees and manages the work and the employees
Facilitator
ensures that all resources and work are available when needed and that any problems are resolved
Communicator
must effectively communicate with senior management, client, project team, and other participants (vendors, dept. managers, etc.) as needed (which is frequently)

5. Project Management and the Project Manager
The Functional Manager vs. The Project Manager
Functional managers are usually specialists, analytically oriented and they know the details of each operation for which they are responsible
Project managers must be generalists that can oversee many functional areas and have the ability to put the pieces of a task together to form a coherent whole

6. Functional Manager and the PM
The Functional Manager
Analytical Approach
Direct, technical supervisor
The Project Manager
Systems Approach
Facilitator and generalist

7. Organizations and Functional Manager
The Functional Manager

8. Project Management and the PM

9. Career Paths – Who Could become Project Manager? – May be You
When working for a company, you will be asked to be part of a project while doing many other things.
With experience, you will be asked to lead a project.
Usually start with a small project, hopefully it becomes your first success story.
Other more challenging projects will come later.
With experience, you will manage simultaneous projects.
Director of the PMO?
(depends on your personality, skills, successes)

11. Project Manager Responsibilities
Responsibilities to the Parent Organization
Responsibility to the Team Members

12. Responsibilities to the Parent Organization
Conservation of resources
Timely and accurate project communications
Careful, competent management of the project
Protect the firm from high risk
Accurate reporting of project status with regard to budget and schedule

13. Responsibilities of the PM
Responsibility to project team members
Fairness, consistency, respect, honesty
Concern for members’ future after project

14. 12 Rules for Project Managers
Two researchers conducted many interviews with senior project managers in which they asked a simple question:
“What information were you never given as a novice project manager that, in retrospect, could have made your job easier?”
The results were summarized into 12 rules for new PMs.
Source: J. Pinto and O. Kharbanda, “Lessons for an Accidental Profession,” Business Horizons, March-April 1995.
Part 2 - Project Managers

15. 12 Rules for Project Managers
Understand the problems, opportunities, and expectations of a project manager.
Recognize that project teams will have conflicts, but this is a natural part of group development.
Understand who the stakeholders are and their agendas.
Realize that organizations are very political and use politics to your advantage.
Realize that project management is “leader intensive” but that you must be flexible.
Part 2 - Project Managers

16. 12 Rules for Project Managers
Understand that project success is defined by four components: budget, schedule, performance criteria, and customer satisfaction.
Realize that you must build a cohesive team by being a motivator, coach, cheerleader, peacemaker, and conflict resolver.
Notice that your team will develop attitudes based on the emotions you exhibit—both positive and negative.
Part 2 - Project Managers

17. 12 Rules for Project Managers
Always ask “what-if” questions and avoid becoming comfortable with the status of the project.
Don’t get bogged down in minutiae and lose sight of the purpose of the project.
Manage your time efficiently.
Above all, plan, plan, plan.
Part 2 - Project Managers

18. Identifying and Summarizing Demands on the PM
A number of demands are critical to the management of projects:
Acquiring sufficient resources
Acquiring and inspiring personnel
Dealing with obstacles
Making project goal trade offs
Dealing with risk and failure (perceived or otherwise)
Maintaining multiple channels of communication
Negotiation

19. Acquiring Sufficient Resources
Resources initially budgeted for projects are frequently inadequate
Sometimes resource trade-offs are required
Subcontracting is an option
Project and functional managers perceive availability of resources to be strictly limited
Competition for resources CAN turn into “win-lose” propositions between project and functional managers

20. Acquiring and Inspiring Personnel
A major problem for the PM is that most people required for a project must be “borrowed”
At times, functional managers may become jealous if they perceive a project as more glamorous than their own functional area
Typically, the functional manager retains control of personnel evaluation, salary, and promotion for those people lent out to projects
Because the functional manager controls pay and promotion, the PM cannot promise much beyond the challenge of the work itself
Violation of “Unity of Command” principle

21. Dealing with Obstacles
One characteristic of any project is its uniqueness and with that come a series of crises:
At the inception of a project, the “fires” tend to be associated with resources
As a project nears completion, obstacles tend to be clustered around two key issues:
Last minute schedule and technical changes
Uncertainty surrounding what happens to members
of the project team when the project is completed

22. Making Project Goal Trade-offs
There will be trade-offs that will affect project goals of any project: cost, time and performance.
Design / formation stage: no significant difference in the importance of the three goals
Build-up stage: schedule is primary goal, followed by performance, which is in turn significantly more important than cost
Final stage/phase-out: performance is significantly more important than cost

23. Making Project Goal Trade-offs
Relative importance of project objectives for each stage of the project life cycle:

24. Multiple Communication Paths
Most of the project manager’s time is spent communicating with the many groups interested in the project
Considerable time must be spent selling, reselling, and explaining the project
Interested parties include:
Top management
Functional departments
Clients
Members of the project team

25. Communication Realities
To effectively deal with the demands, a PM must understand and deal with certain fundamental issues:
Must understand why the project exists
Critical to have the support of top management
Build and maintain a solid information network
Must be flexible in many ways, with as many people, and about as many activities as possible throughout the life of the project

26. Selecting the Project Manager
Some key attributes, skills, and qualities that have been sought in PM are:
Strong technical background
Assertive and successful functional manager
Mature and calm
Someone who is currently available
Someone on good terms with senior executives
Knows how to keep a team focused and inspired
Experience in several different fucntions
A person who can walk on (or part) the waters

28. PM Selection “Criteria”
Four major categories of skills that are required for the PM and serve as the key criteria for selection:
Credibility
Sensitivity
Managerial skills and adaptive leadership style
Ability to handle stress and conflict

29. Credibility The PM needs two kinds of credibility:
Technical credibility –
Perceived by key stakeholders as possessing sufficient technical knowledge to direct the project
Conversational competence
Administrative credibility
Keeping the project on schedule and within costs
Making sure reports are accurate and timely
Ensuring project team has material, equipment, and labor when needed.

30. Sensitivity
There are several ways for project managers to display sensitivity:
Understanding the organization’s political structure
Sense interpersonal conflict on the project team or between team members and outsiders
Does not avoid conflict, but confronts it and deals with it before it escalates
Keeps team members focused on problems not people
Situational “radar”--ability to sense when team members may try to “sweep things under the rug”

31. Leadership Style
Leadership: “interpersonal influence, exercised in situation and directed through the communication process, toward the attainment of a specified goal or goals.”
Other attributes may include:
enthusiasm
optimism
energy
tenacity
courage
personal maturity
adaptability

32. Problems of Cultural Differences
Project managers must adapt to the social/cultural environment in which they are workings
This is especially true when the project is in another country
There can be real problems on international projects when a culture’s opinion of some group are different from the firm’s

33. The PM “Moral Compass”
A PM must also have a strong sense of ethics. Some common ethical missteps are listed below:
“wired” bids and contracts (the winner has been predetermined)
“buy-in” (bidding low with the intention of cutting corners or forcing subsequent contract changes)
“kickbacks”
“covering” for team members (group cohesiveness)
taking “shortcuts” (to meet deadlines or budgets)
using marginal (substandard) materials
compromising on safety
violating standards
consultant (e.g., auditors) loyalties (to employer or to client or to public)