Project Management : Management Culture

Over my career, I’ve been involved in a many projects such as the acceptance of new electric rail cars to the development of a computerize maintenance management system. These projects involved dozens people, crossed department lines and spanned many months from their conception to their implementation. While most of what I learned was acquired during the project, I attended a project management course that was offered by my company’s training and development department. Whether serving as a team member or project leader, I’ve gained many insights into the process of project management.

As the world is chaotic (Djavanshir and Khorramshahgol, 2006) it is impossible to always predict the future accurately. Teller at al (2012) describes project management as balancing the “iron triangle”, where changes to any one of the planned costs, quality or scope will change the other elements. Risk management allows contingency to be put into project plans, (APM, 2012) minimising negative effects and maximising the benefits of uncertainty.

There are a number of organizational behavior concepts that affect the success or failure of any organization; a few examples would be communication, motivation and decision making. Every organization has its’ own organizational culture which defines the organizational behaviors that it believes to be most important. An organization’s values, mission statement, goals and philosophy all make up the organizations culture. An example of an extremely successful company with a very strong organizational culture is Wal-Mart.

Organizational cultures develop over time thus the need to adopt and integrate valuable components towards realization of effective and efficient development of the organizational cultures. Understanding of the organizational culture is an essential aspect towards the achievement of quality culture with the aim of enhancing the output and development of the teams. In understanding organizational culture, it is critical to evaluate factors affecting the development of organizational culture within the context of an organization. Some of the critical factors influencing the development of organizational culture include purpose, processes, history, goals, objectives, size, social, and economic factors.

In project management, there are many methods to handle how the project should be completed, how an ethical situation should be handled, what types of decisions should be made. Furthermore, how much knowledge the project manager should possess, their focus of completing the job on budget and schedule, and understand the scope, as well as, knowing how to communicate.

While time, cost, and performance present the most tangible measures of project success, the academic literature offers more vigorous metrics for success. Baker et.al., advocate that the stakeholder perceived performance is what should be measured (Baker & Murphy, 1983). They go on to provide at least 10 factors ranging from clarity of project goals, to the capacities of the team members (including the Project Manager), and robust project management practices are followed for planning and scope control. The limitation to the work presented by Baker et.al, as Mantel et., al suggest is that it was limited to only R&D projects and may have limited implications for other type of projects (Meredith & Mantel, 2012). An alternative framework for measuring and determining project success was presented by Belassi & Tukel, who proposed that success could be determined by four groups of factors; 1: Factors related to the project; 2: Factors related to the project manager and team; Factors related to the organization; and Finally, 4: Factors related to the external environment. In this model they argue that the factor groups are interrelated and depending on the project can greatly impact the different success of each or failure of each grouping and ultimately the project (Belassi & Tukel, 1996).

The research on project management has been studied for decades. Many scholars and managers put great efforts into finding out what can influence project success. Through their continuing work and precious experiences, what factors dominate the success of projects is well documented in literature. The use of these guide texts can help project managers to deal with difficult tasks. Moreover, it is unanimous consensus that project critical success factors are necessary for management team to achieve project objectives and ensure success. If they are well considered and addressed, then it is more likely that a project would have more successful outcomes. On the other hand, if these factors are not rigorously taken into account,

Even though the price would be lowered because of the bad weather as per the tying in price and weather policy, not everyone would still want to go away. Either it needs to be explained clearly on the website that undesirable weather will not entitle any customer to a refund or to change or cancel their booking without penalty; or the policy must be clear in whatever the company decides is fair. For example, it may state that if the weather is unpleasant can change (but not cancel) the booking to another time.

Being a project manager (PM) is complicated and requires a unique set of skills to be able to effectively deliver a project on time and within budget. According to Harrin (2015) some of the needed skills include negotiation, scheduling, cost control, communication, project recovery, coaching, and a sense of humor. The project manager must be able to juggle multiple and sometimes conflicting priorities in order to achieve project success. One tool that can assist the project manager in this objective is the use of Microsoft Project (MSP). With this tool, the project manager can view the status of the project in regards to deliverables, resources, and budget as it progresses its way to completion.

Since organization culture is the combination of many factors there are several factors that could affect it. Among the internal factors to consider are the company’s approaches to their processes, is the company more into results and profits or product quality and employee’s safety. Management style is another important feature that affects corporate culture micromanage companies tend to have less motivated employees. Technology these days influence organizations at all levels as the company’s approach to technology will go hand on hand with bettering processes. New factor affecting corporate culture these days is the different work arrangements that are needed these days with the implementation of flexing time and tele-working had commuting acceptable. The management approach to work environment, communication style will definite affect organization culture.

I located two articles that discussed the factors in a successful and failed project. The first article is “Project Management Practices: The Criteria for Success or Failure” by: Iman Attarzadeh and Siew Hock Ow. In this article the authors discuss the top ten factors for a successful and a failed project. The second article that I located was, “Top 10 Main Causes of Project Failure” by: Rosanne Lim. In this article, Lim discusses the ten factors that cause a project to fail.

The VP of marketing, Lori, selected Elliot Wood as the project manager for the Video Game Market Research Project. Elliot had previous project management and market research experience within the company, and he also was an avid video game enthusiast. He still had the Atari system he used to play in high school, and he enjoyed playing newer games with his two children. Elliot, however, was wary of doing business on the Internet and refused to make any of his own purchases online. He also did not let his grade school children use the Internet unless they were

The idea of "organizational culture" refers to the personality of an organization, and the personality is build up by a group of people with differences. Each individual of the organization plays a uniqueness role. Organizational culture is defined as an assembly of traditions, values, procedures, conceptions and postures with engenders the context of activities in the organization (Schein, 2012). Organization culture is likewise significant part of management as it is the hinge which decides the function of the organization.

To fully capture the context of this study, it is important to understand the project environment and the circumstance in which project operates as well as getting to know the meaning of project and project management.

The classic Phrase by Mckinsey organisation, “the culture is how we do things around here” is taken as reference by many great people. It’s true that culture exist in an organisation which influences the work being done and also affects the success or failure of the project.