Project Management Office For The Government

In the current business environment, the demand for project managers is ever growing. In short, project management is a provisional project constrained by time, cost and scope (A guide to the project management body of knowledge, 2013). Between the immense organization, optimization, and communication assets skilled project management brings to a project, it is easy to see why project management is a booming field of study. Furthermore, project management can be both financially and personally rewarding when long term milestones and goals come to fruition.

Project Context: AtekPC founded in 1984, has grown to become a mid-sized U.S PC maker, with 2100 employees, $1.9m revenues in 2006. With the transition of PC industry from a growth market to that of a maturing market, AtekPC was experiencing tremendous cost pressure and changing management urgency. In order to positioning the organization for the future, John Strider, CIO for AtekPC, had strong convictions that the PMO-light model1was the way to go.

Public sector services are complex by nature by that I mean that they are difficult to manage and lead. It can be argued that there are many reasons for these complexities, notwithstanding the influence of context i.e. the outside dynamic environment punctuating public sector organisations globally.

Project Governance: During this activity the structure of the PMO and how it fits into the rest of the organization is defined. It must be decided of the PMO will be centralised in the organization or if it will be used in a consultative role. If it is the formed then the project managers will form part of the PMO staff, if the latter then the project managers will use the PMO to do consulting.

Project management has quickly become something that is used by most organizations when the organization wants to finish a project in a timely manner and within budget. Project management helps companies to meet their strategic mission in a planned and organized way. This paper will explain what project management is and the importance of it to the business world, the project life-cycle management and the benefits that project management has to an organization and the concept that goes into the planning of the life-cycle and how research and critical thinking is a mandatory part of planning. This paper will also explain project organizations and the importance of leadership and sponsorship, project team building and the techniques

Ambitions reform agendas have failed due to poorly articulated mission, value, and impact (Lavigna, 2014) that prevent the stakeholders (workforce) from seeing the bigger picture. This poses an additional challenge that is unique to the public sector. Another aspect that inhibits change in the public sector is the imbalance between authority and responsibility among government officials. As a result public managers are burdened with immense responsibilities but very little authority to initiate and sustain organizational

In the first paragraph of chapter 2 ‘Project Management’, the traditional way of project management is explained. The basic idea behind the traditional approach is that projects are relatively predictable and the goal is optimization and efficiency in following a project plan to finalize the project within the triple constraint (Spundak, 2014). The traditional approach emphasizes that a uniform way of doing project management is the main reason for why it was introduced; however, prescribing that the same methods and techniques could be applied to all projects in the same way, especially when companies are getting more innovative, is not quite realistic anymore. ‘Projects become progressively complex, with a higher number of tasks and complex interrelations, while the traditional project management approach is based on mostly hierarchical and linear task relations and cannot properly reflect all complexity and dynamics of today’s projects’ (Williams, Thomas, & Hodgson, 2006).

Organizations use governance to establish strategic direction and performance parameters. The strategic direction provides the purpose, expectations, goals, and actions necessary to guide business pursuit and is aligned with business objectives. Project management activities should be aligned with top-level business direction, and if there is a change, then project objectives need to be realigned. In a project environment, changes to project objectives affect project efficiency and success. When the business alignment for a project is constant, the chance for project success greatly increases because the project remains aligned with the strategic direction of the organization. Should something change,

Majority of countries are seeking to develop a culture in the public sector that is more performance oriented , one that gives much focus to efficiency, effectiveness, quality Customer care, an increased focus on results as well as more decentralised management (Petrie,2002). In the last two decades performance management in the public sector has shifted its focus to putting in place systems for measuring outputs and rewarding results (Heinrich, 2003).

The public sector is one of the most important sectors of any countries. The public sector entities offer services, goods or programs to public for non-profit purpose. However, the private sector is mainly composed by for-profit entities. In this report, I will regard the public sector entities as government or government-controlled

The notion of development has become the world’s major concern since the last century. Many countries around the world are striving to alleviate themselves from underdeveloped countries. Thus, one of the main challenges is to create an efficient public management for their citizens. However, in order to do so government must emphasize on comparing those public management with other regions to succeed their goals. For three decades, comparative public management has become the key factors which drive a better governance. “Comparative” in terms of public management is basically meant to study structural mechanism and contexts that countries have in common. (Subramaniam, 2000). It is defined as a tool to analyze the weakness and strength of the government’s structure in order to cover their loophole across regional and global survey research (Wilson, 2011). The terms of “Comparative” also play an important role guiding what government should do in order to succeed in their structures, it also helps government to analyze the gaps of their national and social settings. Moreover, public management is currently becoming government’s main focus on achieving their goals in creating an effective good service delivery to their citizens (Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2004). This paper will examine comparable element in public management. Furthermore, the paper will identify the process, benefits and harmfulness of the comparison.

The public sector being an economic agent, acts on behalf of the public to judiciously harness all economic resources for the benefit of all. Comprising of the Executive, the Judiciary, the Legislative, the Armed Forces, the Para-Military Organisations, the Police, the Ministries, the Public Enterprises (collectively referred to as Ministries, Departments and Agencies), the public sector refers to a system of government employees, elected or appointed that serve members of the public through the provision of goods and service. The term is also a generic name for both the civil service and the parastatals or public enterprises combined. It equally encompasses undertakings that engage in the provision of goods and services which the private sector may not be able to invest in. It is generally recognized that the public sector, as an instrument for carrying out government policies, has a vital role to play in the social and economic development of a country.

Alternative approaches to management developed over the years are extremely important to modern software project management, although new approaches are needed to deal with some of the toughest challenges. According to experts, “the popular interest in management as a discipline and a field of study is fairly recent. But management, both as a practice and as a field of study, has a respectable history, in many different countries, going back almost two centuries.” (Drucker 2008, p.12). Modern approaches to management were developed in the USA after World War II which are now taught in colleges and universities. The four classic functions about management one may learn in school are: “planning, organizing, leading, and controlling” (Nelson & Economy 2005, p. 5). More functions need to be added to the list of skills for acquiring in the process of learning about project management aspects. Project management challenges can be viewed from a process perspective and many experts such as McFarland (1970) highlighted this view. Management is the “process by which managers create, direct, maintain and operate purposive, organizations though systematic, coordinated, cooperative human effort” (McFarland 1970, p. 5). “Because projects are transient, their delivery follows a development process, from germination of the idea, through initiation, design and delivery, to commissioning, handover to the client and closeout of the work.” (Turner 2014, p. 5)

This research proposal explores the feasibility of management in the public Sector as an organizational paradigm and new model in organizational development. The literature review reviews numerous journal articles that explore on the key concepts of change management strategies from a public sector project management perspective. The authors suggest that employee's participation, effective feedback across the board, and empowerment of subordinate staffs is a major step in transforming public organizations. This proposal further hypothesis that establishment of long-term and productivity advantages are crucial throughout the organization.

infrastructure development in public sector in Nigeria, the survey used in this study was partially based on survey instruments adapted and some generated by the researcher. A number of questions used in the instrument were developed specifically to suite this dissertation. However, researchers undertaking studies in strategic budgetary system in the future would benefit from survey questions validated more specifically in the context of power sector infrastructure development. Furthermore, the answers from respondents also need to be understood in the context of public servants giving answers that they felt were expected rather than absolutely honest answers for fear of exposing important personal and government secrets. Lastly, in Nigeria public sector there is dearth of data for research. As a corollary, collection of