Project Management: Introduction
Project management is concerned with the beginning, planning, carrying out, controlling, and wrapping up of a project with the intention of attaining certain objectives and fulfilling a specific standard of success. A project could be a concept or a physical object, like a building. The paper digs deeper into the difficulty of successfully managing projects, the complexity of many current initiatives, and the exciting potential that projects allow us to utilize.
Difficulties in Successfully Managing Projects
A project manager is in charge of overseeing the project management process and developing the project management strategy. In as much as the project charter may list other parties to the project such as the steering team, the project manager is considered the head of the team and therefore faces most of the project management challenges. According to Shenhar, Aaron J., and Dov Dvir (93), there are four main challenges of managing projects successfully.
Main Challenges of Managing Projects Successfully
One, the challenge of an improper definition of goals and scope of the project. A project manager needs to manage the scope creep of a project beyond the original objectives to allow for flexibility. The challenge of improperly defined goals comes in when the project manager sets goals which are unrealistic based on the available resources.
Working with team members is the second main challenge affecting the successful project management. A project management plan involves many people, and the success of the project depends on the cohesiveness of the team members.
Challenges such as lack of accountability by the team members and the inadequate skills among the team members can halt a project. Three, management of project risks is a big challenge in project management. There are many risks which fall into different categories such as cost, stakeholder, and resource categories. Failure to manage such risks may as well terminate the project (Elkington, Paul, and Clive Smallman 52).
Finally, the challenge of managing expectations is one that project managers have to deal with. For instance, shareholders in a company only expect success out of the projects financed by their investments and delay in completion of such projects may prove challenging to the manager especially in as far as making all the stakeholders is concerned.
Complexity of Many of Today's Projects
Today's projects have many complications because of the development of technology and infrastructure. One, it is highly complex in today's world to accurately locate fixed and variable costs to a project because of many factors. Project costs are affected by many economic, political and legal factors in today's world which makes it quite cumbersome, unlike in the past, to give an estimate of the costs for instance; the price of materials can increase because of inflation or a shift in the foreign exchange rate(Shenhar, Aaron J., and Dov Dvir 54).
Two, there are many legal bottlenecks which have been included in the project development faces today which makes projects capital outflow too high and complex. For instance, in the real estate, there are clearance fee charges which a project manager has to part with to effectively complete a project.
Increasing number of catastrophes has resulted in extra charges of insurance making the management of projects quite expensive. Because on the high likelihood of risk occurrence, many insurance companies have increased their premium charges and even banks and other money lending institutions have also increased the interest rates charged on loans acquired for the purpose of developing projects.
Finally, today's world has increased risks which never existed before making it complex to control projects. For instance, the rise in competition level among projects has made it complex to assure stakeholders of an immediate success upon completion of the project which then comes with the risk of getting initial capital from such stakeholders as money lending institutions.
The Exciting Breakthroughs or Opportunities that Projects Allow Us to Exploit
In as much as there are challenges and complexities in projects, there are still some exciting opportunities which are available and best exploited by the invention and build up of projects. The opportunity of demand exceeding supply in many sectors of the economy makes projects the best option to exploit them. For instance, in real estate, there are fewer residential areas than are people willing to lease. This creation of projects such as residential houses, therefore, enables us to make use of such opportunities by providing for the people and bridging the gap between supply and demand.
Two, projects allow us to be more creative in developing the already existing technology. It is through projects that we can think critically about new technology and how to use them in coming up with unique products. Finally, projects allow us to seize the opportunity of making the world a global village for instance, the Facebook project has enabled people from all over the world to interact freely.
Works Cited
Elkington, Paul, and Clive Smallman. “Managing project risks: a case study from the utilities sector.” International Journal of Project Management 20.1 (2002): 49-57.
Shenhar, Aaron J., and Dov Dvir. “Project management research-the challenge and opportunity.” Project management journal 38.2 (2007): 93.
