6

Conclusion:

In this session the results obtained from the survey and individual writer’s view relating to the
research hypothesis will be analysed. In summary the results indicate that:

Project management has been part of human endeavour since the beginning of recorded history,
but the nature of the projects and it environment often changes due to project complexity and
uncertainty in this era, therefore the project requires more diversity of skills. However, project
management has been practiced for decades, where firms started using modern management
tools and techniques to manage projects prior to the 1950s. A project is basically anything that
usually has one time activity with a well defined set of desired end results and is terminated
when the objectives have been reached.

Project management is an application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project

activities in order to meet the need of stakeholders including balancing competing demand
among scope, time, cost and quality and being able to identify the needed requirement and
unexpected issues that might arise during project execution. Project management gained its
popularity in the past decade due to economic pressure of the industrialised world competition,
rival firms and failure of most projects because of inadequate planning and coordination of
resources, poor estimation of duration and cost, lack of quality control, lack of communication
with shareholders and interested customers etc. It gave clear definition to all those involved to
know how much responsibilities, authority and accountability they have and guide the project
through a proper control and visible set of activities to achieve the firm’s attainable results.

It allows efficient and accurate planning and implementation and ensures that all aspects of the
project planning series including analysis link the outcome together and develop a master plan to
control such components. The most successful criteria in project management are management
of cost, time and performance quality because there is a time limit for most projects, cost limit
set up under control of an internal implementation project manager because a lot of people
involved in most large merger projects, therefore cost is very important to be controlled in all
aspect as project is executed. Project often have performance quality objective equally as cost or
time to be achieved. These three elements are interrelated therefore a change in one affects the
other or both of the other variables.

The study revealed that a merger is a project in that it has a defined aim and objective, one-off
activity which has a start and end time just as construction of building, bank etc. The primary
motive of majority of most companies embarking on merger programme is basically driven by a
range of rationales such as strategic objective, synergy, specialist skills, elimination of inefficient
management, revenue enhancement etc. however, merger success or failure can relatively be
measured in short – term or long – term. A good merger project plan includes understanding of
the work to be undertaken, by identifying and where possible defining the majority products of
the project, identifying the major activities to be performed to deliver the product, assessing the
major risk of the project and putting in place counter measures, estimate the effort needed,
identify the key decision and review points for the project and given project constraints.

Furthermore, merger pre-implementation process includes the planning of the implementation

process itself where the project manager actually executes the plan for a successful
implementation outcome which covers the overall lifecycle of the project from inception and
completion of the deal. It was generally suggested that the higher the project planning, the less
risk there is and the higher the detailed planning the lower the amount of contingency planning
required therefore the higher degree of pre-implementation planning the greater chance the
implementation itself working satisfactorily.

An effective implementation plan must contain a degree of flexibility and being capable to any
changes that emerges during project execution. However, firms management consultant use
different format depending on the size of the project developing in a particular sector, for
example, critical path analysis (CPA) and project evaluation and review techniques (PERT) have
some common approach but could look differently depending on the project. British standard
(BS) 6079 have established a format for (SPD) to accommodate provision for standing schedule
and cost planning techniques recording modification and amendments. There are different types
of tools and techniques that project management use to address certain issues, but the
fundamental expertise area relevant to project management includes planning, authorisation and
organizing, controlling, directing, team-building and leading, and these are primary used in order
to execute specific project that are subject to time constraints cost limit quality specification and
safety standard.

Total Petroleum (Gh) ltd is one of the firms that have been successfully embarked on merger
project. Total (Gh) ltd is one of the global oil industries with many branches in most part of the
world who recently merge with Mobil (Gh) ltd who is also in the same industry. The study
revealed that due to good structure and adequate planning and implementation put in place at the
inception of the merger project and good reputation of the merging firm has resulted to a
successful merger implementation process.

However, the findings show that, the business case of the objective has been achieved which
confirms the General Manager opinion during the phone interview. He cited that the motive of
the merging firm has been achieved due to adequate structure covering all aspect of the project
taken into account at the outset. The risk assessment was accounted for at the beginning and
effective counter measure was enacted to control the risk. The overall planning committee was
fully committed and the team was also committed to the implementation plan during project
execution. There was effective delegation of authority which confirms the operations managers
view. He again confirm that the organizing and executing of the project also went on according
to plan, there were effective measures of controlling and directing to achieve the overall
objective, human resource issues such as poor communications, staff motivation, welfare of staff
and change management which normally result to merger failure in some cases were properly
taken into account during the planning stage. These confirm the writers view in the academic
literature which indicates that a well planned merger project is likely to overcome most
difficulties during the integration section which eventually result in a successful post – merger
project process.

Figure 1Typical project management time–cost–quality

During planning or execution a project might move from point A in Figure 8.2 to point B. Point
A represents a low-time (slow), low-cost (cheap), low-quality alternative. If there is a change
requirement for improved quality within the system there might be a new desired end point B. In
moving from point A to point B the quality will increase by the amount shown on the quality
axis. This will result in a corresponding increase in time and a corresponding increase in cost. It
is not possible normally to increase quality without increasing time or cost. In reality, an increase
in quality will almost certainly lead to an increase in both of these variables.

The need for integrated planning and control procedures together with the recent corresponding
success of project management was caused by the changing nature of industrial projects over the
past 50 years. Generally, as industry has evolved, it has become more complex. Technological
processes have become more complex, and this has been coupled with ever more complicated
organisational and administrative procedures. Technology and organisational processes, like
plants and animals, tend to evolve into ever more complex and sophisticated structures over time.
Figure 8.3 The typical project management time–cost–quality continuum

In terms of managing change it might be appropriate to take one or more of the project success
criteria as fixed. Organisations frequently borrow extensively in order to finance an acquisition,
and further borrowing would be extremely difficult and costly. In such cases it is common to find
that the maximum cost criterion is firmly fixed. The fixing of one of the success criteria allows
the project manager to vary the other two objectives and select the best combination of values
needed in order to respond to the change. In Figure 2 some form of change has occurred and the
project manager has to respond to this change in some way. There may be a need to reduce costs
or reduce time. The project manager might want to adjust the project objectives in order to reach
a new solution that matches those changed criteria. It might be decided that the quality or
performance of the project cannot be compromised. This may be the result of an executive
decision from higher up the organisation.

Fixing performance has the effect of drawing a line through the objectives continuum. Time and
cost can still vary within their minimum and maximum limits, but performance is now fixed. The
range of possible solutions is therefore defined by the points of intersection of time and cost
variables on the fixed performance line. Figure 8.3 shows two possible outcomes (outcome 1 and
outcome 2) with corresponding cost (C1 and C2) and time (T1 and T2) values that define the
intersection point of these variables with the fixed performance line.

It should be clear that this approach allows the relationship between the various project objective
criteria to be used to generate a range of possible outcomes while not compromising any
variables that cannot be modified in response to the change.