Project Management Essay Text

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Anything that is temporary and has a definite starting and ending date is known as a project. This article provides several topic ideas to base your project management essay on. There are many associations for project management the most well known today is project management institute from usa. Your essay could be based on explaining the project management basics based on the methodology provided by any one of the associations.

Comparing the methodologies by two or more associations is another topic to write about. Pick up any project that has failed and find the reasons behind its failure, typically based on lack of proper project management practices. Check out several projects that were successfully completed and find out the best practices and success factors that led to the success of these projects. Project managers are important to carry out project management processes defined by an organization. Project managers require special qualities which can be discussed in detail in the project management essay. Project management for construction is different from project management in software industry.

Each industry is characterized by its needs and typical processes followed that need to be incorporated in the project management processes. Also, the best practices, success factors and reasons of failure may be specific to a particular industry like construction or software. Now a day’s many people and organisation today have a totally new awareness in project management. In the past project management mostly focused on providing schedule and recourse data to top management in the military and construction industries. Kathy schwalbe, 2009 today project management involves lots more, and new technologies have become significant factor in project management.

To understand project management, it is important to understand what is project, as per pmbok, project is a temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique, product, service or result. Where temporary means that every project has a defined end, unique means that the product or service is different in some distinguishing way from all similar products or services. Project sometimes overlap by operation but both are different, operation are ongoing and repetitive, while project are temporary and unique. As per this triple constraint gray and larson’s definition of project is looks more expressive, a project is a complex, non routine, one time effort limited by time, budget, resources, and performance specifications designed to meet the customers’ needs.

Gray/larson is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet project requirement. Pmbok guide, 2003 now a day’s project management is not a special requirement it is becoming the way of managing business. Project management is the integration processes of initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and controlling and closing. Normally the project manager is a controller, who is responsible for completing the project. The project manager is also facilitate the people involved in or effected by project. Management knowledge like financial management, sales, marketing, strategic planning and operations management.

Skills like human relations or we can say soft skills like leadership, communication, problem solving and motivation. As a project manager positive leadership is plays very big and important role in project management. The socio cultural aspects of project management people and their culture is an area that is common to all projects.

Culture is also an area that has been identified as a cause of project failure dinsmore, 1984 jaeger amp kanungo, 1990 verma, 1995 muriithi amp crawford, 2003. Since everyone brings culture to the project, the project manager needs to be aware of, and understand how culture can and will impact the project. Accepting a position as a project manager also means accepting the responsibilities of leader. The study found effective project manager are good leaders, characteristic of effective project manager are lead by example, visionaries, technically competent, decisive, good communicators, and good motivators. Positive leadership – the most important characteristics of positive leadership is being a team builder and communicator, having high self esteem, focusing on results, demonstrating trust and respect and setting goals. Leadership style autocratic leaders make decisions without consulting their teams. Democratic leaders allow the team to provide input before making a decision, although the degree of input can vary from leader to leader.

Laissez faire leaders don't interfere they allow the team to make many of the decisions. They follow rules rigorously, and ensure that their staff follows procedures precisely. A charismatic leadership style can seem similar to transformational leadership, because these leaders inspire lots of enthusiasm in their teams and are very energetic in driving others forward.

However, charismatic leaders can tend to believe more in themselves than in their teams, and this creates a risk that a project, or even an entire organization, might collapse if the leader leaves. With people oriented leadership, leaders are totally focused on organizing, supporting, and developing the people in their teams. When someone, at any level within an organization, leads simply by meeting the needs of the team, he or she is described as a servant leader.

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Highly task oriented leaders focus only on getting the job done, and they can be quite autocratic. Transactional leadership is really a type of management, not a true leadership style, because the focus is on short term tasks. Transformational leadership as we discussed earlier, people with this leadership style are true leaders who inspire their teams constantly with a shared vision of the future.

In many organizations, both transactional and transformational leadership are needed. The transactional leaders or managers ensure that routine work is done reliably, while the transformational leaders look after initiatives that add value. Usually leadership and management terms are often used similar, there is a big different between them. The leader focuses on ling term goals and objectives and inspires people to reach those goals.

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