Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Managing and being the leader of a project is a complex undertaking that requires years
of experience and knowledge to handle efficiently. The complexity and planning that go into
managing a project effectively means that there is more than one factor that goes into making
these projects move smoothly and efficiently on the track to completing the goal. The project
manager has to be able to manage his team, have excellent time management skills, and solid
fundamentals. Our course has covered more than these four factors, but I would argue that they
are more important than the others and are vital to the success or failure of a project.
The first factor I will discuss is the need for a leader to be able to effectively manage their
team to bring the best out of them and help develop their skills to better serve the needs for your
project. However, before a leader can begin to concern themselves with helping their team
develop and managing them, the leader must make the choice about who has the required skills
and aptitudes to be brought into the project team. This is a crucial step in the project management
world because having the right team can make or break a project’s success. Even one team
member within the team can have a snowball effect or negative consequences for a project. If a
team member is unable to pull their weight, either due to the fact that they lack the required
skills, or they lack motivation, then the other team members are forced to pick up the slack and
feel more pressure and the quality of their work could suffer as a result. This is especially true if
the project has a tight deadline and allows for little mistakes and time must be managed
effectively and efficiently. Once the project leader has chosen his or her team that best fits the
needs of the project, he or she must continuously manage them and help them develop their skills
over the course of the project’s life span in order to get the most out of their team. This further
development of a project leader’s team increases their ability to work autonomously in the later
stages of the project with minimal supervision required. This is also an investment for the future
because the project leader can call upon these team members for future projects and can take full
advantage of the time and effort previously put in and it becomes a solid investment.
Speaking of time management, a project leader must be able to budget and schedule it
effectively in order to keep the project on track and their team on track with their responsibilities.
Leaders have multiple options when it comes to managing their time and their teams’
responsibilities. One of these is called a Responsibility Assignment Matrix and it can be used to
have a set agreement of who and what and who is responsible for each aspect of the project. This
helps the project stay on track by assigning everyone a specific task they are responsible for
which eliminates the chance of two people working on the same task or a task being forgotten all
together. This helps to make sure that the project is using the time allotted for the project
efficiently. Another thing the project manager can do to maintain deadlines and the project’s
schedule is by laying out all the milestones and deliverables that must meet in order for the
project to be considered a success. This helps your team visualize their progress moving forward
and helps them to see that they are making a tangible difference working on their part of the
project. Also, identifying task dependencies can pay dividends over the course of your project’s
lifespan because the project manager can lay out the tasks within a project that are interrelated
and dependent upon one another. This can help identify which tasks can be worked on
simultaneously and which tasks must wait on others to be completed. This saves the team time
because there won’t be any mix-ups about the interdependencies of tasks and waiting for others
to complete their tasks for you to be able to work on their own. At the end of all this time
management, a project leader can expect their project to be completed before or on the deadline
and avoiding cost overruns and penalties due to needing more time. This also helps preserve the
reputation of your organization because you build the reputation of completing projects on time.
When examining what fundamentals are required for a project leader to succeed, I would
argue that the most important ones are as follows; knowing the strengths and weaknesses of you
and your team and knowing the phases of a project. The most obvious of these is the importance
of knowing what you and your team can or cannot handle. Accepting projects that are outside
your area of expertise or ability runs the high risk of being a failure or being under delivered and
disappointing the project sponsor and their organization. This affects the reputation of your
organization and can lead to a loss of future profits and contracts. Of course, this doesn’t mean
that you and your team can never try something new, because they can and should do this.
However, this should be only attempting if the project leader takes the time to expand his or her
team’s abilities and develop them further into new areas of expertise. The project leader could
also bring in new talent to his or her team that has previous experience or expertise in working
with this new kind of project that is being offered to the team. This new member, or members,
can bring their new expertise to educate their fellow team members on the new procedures and
knowledge needed. These kinds of changes should not be done overnight, however, and must be
given ample time to be implemented. I would argue that it is best to prepare for new kinds of
projects before accepting them so that once you win the contract, your team can get right to work
and begin working on the project without having to delay the project by planning out how your
team must adapt to the new kind of project they just accepted. Knowing the five phases of
project management and what is to be expected of each one and the milestones they include for
your project is vital to keep a project flowing at a smooth rate towards the finish line. Doing
tasks of a project out of order and leading your team to do things out of order and ignoring the
phases of project management makes your project a messy undertaking that will likely lead to a
multitude of problems such as missing deadlines, cost overruns, team frustration, and poor
quality of work. As the expression goes, putting the cart before the horse is never a good idea
and will lead to task dependencies being skewed and messy. A more specific example of this
would be putting off the work breakdown schedule until phase four when it should have been
completed in phase two. The lack of the work breakdown schedule in phase two spells trouble
for a project because your team won’t have set task assignments and would instead be working
When I first began this class, I knew nothing about project management other than the
vague sense of project management I experienced doing school projects within a group. It never
occurred to me that project management can be so in depth and technical. I imagine that this was
due to my belief that project managers simply “made things work” rather than having technical
aspects and phases of project management that they have to adhere to in order to have success.
Now that I am aware of these in-depth features of project management, I find myself thinking
about how the super large companies use the techniques we learned in this class and how they
implement them during meetings and how these meetings are organized and how the teams
perform under these real-life conditions where the stakes are higher than ever. I also find it
interesting to think about if the project managers at these large companies do things “by the
book” like we learned in the textbooks for this class or if they have modified the ideas and turned
them into their own unique form of project management. I imagine that in the beginning of their
careers, they did everything “by the book” but after a decade or more of experience they would
find what works for them and what doesn’t. From this they would them create their own unique
system of project management formed after years and years of experience. In my experience
working on school projects, I find myself often adapting to certain situations to have the group
moving forward with the project and keeping it on track. Project management is not a “one size
fits all” solution by any means. Every project manager worth their salt must be able to improvise
and adapt to fit the needs of the project. I would argue that this is also where their unique blend
The areas of project management that I feel I excel in are things relating to managing a
team and facilitating the communication within a team. In the past, I have generally taken a
management and leader role in groups and projects I am assigned to. I usually do this because
I’m not always comfortable with others making the decisions and leading a group rather than a
strong desire to be a leader. I feel like I am more of an asset to my team if I am leading it. I have
an excellent track record as a team leader and I cannot remember the last time a group that I lead
got less than an A on a project. As the leader, I feel as if I have more of an interest in my group’s
success because it would reflect poorly upon me if they failed under my guidance. Of course,
getting an A on a project is a nice touch on top of the feeling of pride as my group succeeds and
meets goals and deadlines with a high quality of work. I also pride myself on my ability to keep
my team members involved in communicating and keeping them involved within the group.
Having a team that communicates well is a must have for any project manager and can relieve so
many potential headaches and setbacks because every person within the group knows what is
Some areas that I can improve in are managing risk and things like cost management and
project scope. These are things that I had no official experience with before taking this class, so I
still have a lot to learn when it comes to implementing these into my management style. They are
important to the management of a project, so I will continue to use them and focus on their
development, but it will take some time. I think I am already on the right path, however, because
seven weeks ago before this class started I had no idea they even existed and now I am aware of
them and how to implement them within a project. I look forward to my first chance to lead a
project that is not within a classroom to gain real world experience and get the opportunity to
setting, cost management is never something that is addressed because it is a classroom and there
In my opinion, my biggest area of growth in this class is learning how to operate within a
group that is purely online with no face to face communication. This was a first for me because I
have only ever worked in groups where we can meet in a classroom multiple times per week and
talk to each other. Having a team that you don't even know what they look like was a strange
experience at first, but it turned out to be a great experience. My team for this class was great and
gives me a lot of optimism for group work in the future. It was a unique experience and I had to
learn how to communicate with team members who I have never met in person or spoken face to
face with. Because of this, it can be difficult to gauge reactions and how they interpret your
interactions so there is a certain degree of guesswork involved but it turned out to be A-Okay and