PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Project Management

Project Management

Introduction

The purpose of this research paper is to understand the role of the project manager of a Trunk Road Network in North West Scotland. Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives (Judge, 2004) It is often closely related to and sometimes conflated with program management.

A project is a temporary endeavor, having a defined beginning and end (usually constrained by date, but can be by funding or deliverables, undertaken to meet particular goals and objectives, usually to bring about beneficial change or added value (Judge, 2004) The temporary nature of projects stands in contrast to business as usual (or operations) which are repetitive, permanent or semi-permanent functional work to produce products or services. In practice, the management of these two systems is often found to be quite different, and as such requires the development of distinct technical skills and the adoption of separate management (Judge, 2004)

The primary challenge of project management is to achieve all of the project goalsand objectives while honoring the preconceived project constraints. Typical constraints are scope, time, and budget. The secondary—and more ambitious—challenge is to optimize the allocation and integration of inputs necessary to meet pre-defined objectives.

Discussion

Role of Project Manager

Being a project manager my steps for establishing my role are hereunder:

Define the Scope

The first, and most important, step in any project is defining the scope of the project. What is it you are supposed to accomplish by managing this project? What is the project objective? Equally important is defining what is not included in the scope of your project (Judge, 2004) If you don't get enough definition from your boss, clarify the scope yourself and send it back upstairs for confirmation.

Determine Available Resources

What people, equipment, and money will you have available to you to achieve the project objectives? As a project manager, you usually will not have direct control of these resources, but will have to manage them through matrix management (Judge, 2004) Find out how easy or difficult that will be to do.

Check the Timeline

When does the project have to be completed? As you develop your project plan you may have some flexibility in how you use time during the project, but deadlines usually are fixed (Pender, 2001) If you decide to use overtime hours to meet the schedule, you must weigh that against the limitations of your budget.

Assemble Your Project Team

Get the people on your team together and start a dialog. They are the technical experts. That's why their functional supervisor assigned them to the project. Your job is to manage the team.

List the Big Steps

What are the major pieces of the project? If you don't know, start by asking your team (Pender, 2001) It is a good idea to list the steps in chronological order but don't obsess about it; you can always change the order later.

List the Smaller Steps

List the smaller steps in each of the larger ...