Discussion 12 510

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Pennsylvania State University *

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Feb 20, 2024

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Take a position on the following statement: “Successful project management is successful stakeholder management. Everything else is secondary.” Do you agree or disagree? Cite examples from the case to support your arguments. In understanding the need for the correct stakeholders is very important. Why they are important is because when it comes to “lack of consensus on what is viewed as a success” (Ghanei, 2023), we will see why stakeholder’s definitions of success come into play. Being able to know what is needed and how to define the success measures helps projects know if they are doing what they need to and are aligned to both company and project objectives. Not only that but also maintaining the financials that the project is running on. Without financial, we cannot execute a project. From the case, the stakeholders, or the Metropolitan Transportation Agency (MTA) was to ““hang on to project ideas, negotiate political support, and find funding.” (Kim “12.1”, 2023). Another thing to note in the case is that the company “f ound that the lower cost phased approach to the project was crucial in overcoming the funding challenges that had plagued the project since its beginning in the 1920s” (Kim “12.1”, 2023). This is where we have found that the “company values their input and is committed to building a collaborative and supportive environment” (Ghanei, 2023) and when we say “their”, we mean the MTA with providing their inputs on next steps. Identify three (3) lessons from the Second Avenue Subway. In other words, assume that you are assigned as the lead project manager for the second phase of the project (construction north to 125th). What lessons would you want to be transferred to your project? What actions would you adopt? From the previous project, we are seeing that the projects are always running over budget and over time. From both of those perspectives and the wide variety of stakeholders, we are seeing that initial planning and communication to be a large problem with execution. I would adopt an impact analysis to help identify the different stakeholders associated with the second part of the project to ensure that our foundation is solid, and we have a clear understanding of how we should communicate with the various other stakeholders to ensure that we are not missing anything as we progress through the project. Secondly, we would define the layout of the project and how our timing, resources and funding allow for a successful project. Defining project success and scope are crucial for the execution of a project and to mitigate any disruption from different obstacles that may arise from the execution of the project. Understanding that being able to understand wholistically what is feasible and what isn’t is very important, so we don’t run the risk of the project failing or being cancelled. Lastly, I would move towards communication pieces. It seems that with the first phase of the project that the stakeholders we not completely informed so then the project had a more reactive approach to different obstacles rather than a proactive approach. Being able to identify or quickly discuss progress helps in reducing uncertainty. I believe that strengthening the communications that we would have with the various stakeholders would allow for a better execution of the project. The good part of this is part two has a lot of similarities to the first phase of the project so we hope to know the projections and the cost and resources needed to execute very similar tasks to what the project team has faced previously.
What were the features of the Second Avenue Subway that allowed it to complete when other rail projects around the U.S. have been canceled (e.g., California’s High-Speed Rail, original Gateway Tunnel project)? With the second avenue, we see that it is a similar project to the first phase in the work that needed to be completed. With the second phase, we saw that the project was executed to be that “the board alone is the deciding factor for how their resources (funding, time, etc.) are distributed among the many sub-projects” (Kim “12.3”, 2023). This was the bottom-up approach to allow the people who are more familiar with the work to provide insight to the leaders or stakeholders in the project changes and expectations with the ask. To also note that there were “added measures that had to be put into place for quality assurance” (Kim “12.3”, 2023). Even though this did add an extra cost to the political side of things, it did assist in mitigating or avoiding risk to schedule or performance issues when executing. This was very helpful in the second phase of the project, so we can meet the expectations set by the stakeholders and the public that used and were happy with the final product and that was also completed on time. Reference: Ghanei, Neda. “The Importance of Stakeholder Buy-in: Achieving Company Goals through Collaboration.” LinkedIn , 28 Mar. 2023, www.linkedin.com/pulse/importance-stakeholder- buy-in-achieving-company-goals-neda-ghanei. Kim, B C. “12.1 Part 1: NYC Second Avenue Subway”. https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2288352/pages/12-dot-1-part-1-nyc-second- avenue-subway?module_item_id=38870896 Kim, B C. “12.3 Part 3: Administrative Decisions”. https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2288352/pages/12-dot-3-part-3-administrative- decisions?module_item_id=38870898
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