Fall 2011

Master of Business Administration-MBA Semester 2 Project Management MB0049 - 4 Credits

(Book ID: B1138) Assignment Set- 1 (60 Marks) Note: Each question carries 10 Marks. Answer all the questions. Q.1 Q.2 Q.3 List and explain the traits if a professional manager. Describe in brief the various aspects of programme management? Compare the following: a. Traditional Vs. Projectised Organization b. Reengineering Vs. E-engineering Q.4 List out the macro issues in project management and explain each.

Q.5

Describe the various steps in risk management listed below:

a. Risk Identification b. Risk Analysis c. Risk Management Planning d. Risk Review Q.6 ABC Company implements got a very big project and they decided to allot the same

to a new project manager, who joined the company recently. In order to execute the project successfully, what are the various phases in which the project lifecycle should be divided.

Fall 2011

Master of Business Administration-MBA Semester 2 Project Management MB0049 - 4 Credits

(Book ID: B1138) Assignment Set- 2 (60 Marks) Note: Each question carries 10 Marks. Answer all the questions. Q.1 Write a short note on the following: a. Work Breakdown Structure b. Estimation Approach

Q.2 Q.3

List and define in Brief all the tools for Post Implementation Review Define the Basic categories of performance management.

Q.4

Write a short note on the following: a. Professional Responsibility b. Business Orientation c. Personnel Productivity d. Conflict Management,

Q.5

Comment on the following a. Importance of DMAIS in project management cycle b. Knowledge areas of project management

Q.6

What are the various SCMo soft wares available in project management? Explain

each in brief.

Traits of the professional manager The following traits enable a manager to be effective in his functioning. Endowed with these it will be easy to be effective. The top management will look for these in a person who they want to employ for project management.

(a) Leadership These managers lead by exhibiting the characteristics of leadership. They know what they should do, know why they are doing it, know how to do it and have the courage and will to do it. They have the power of taking along with them others.

(b) People Relationships Any leader without followers cannot be successful. They have excellent human relationship skills. The manager builds up his team based on the core values of sincerity, objectivity and dedication. He ensures that his subordinates get opportunities for growth based on performance. He makes them a part of the decision making process, thus ensuring cooperation and commitment during implementation. He delegates freely and supports them.

(c) Integrity Highest levels of trust, fairness and honesty are expected while dealing with people both within an outside the organisation. This includes the customers, shareholders, dealers, employees, the government and society at large. They ensure that functioning is clean. Their transactions will be transparent. Ethics is something they practice diligently.

(d) Quality The quality philosophy should not cover only the product quality, but every process that has gone into making it. Economy of words when instructions are given, acknowledging compliance, arriving on time, remembering the promises and above all a keen eye for details and patience to make others know what they want are components of quality.

(e) Customer Orientation It is now recognized that every organized two sets of customers. Internal customers are people in the organisation employees, directors, and team members any person who needs your services, whose needs of demands you satisfy. External customers clients and all members of society we come in contact in connection with our business. They need our solutions for their problems. So, the managers thinking about any problem is what can I do for him and all actions will be in that direction.

(f) Innovation and creativity Professional managers think beyond the obvious. They exhibit a keenness to go behind a problem and attempt to find the root cause of the problem. They will draw from their experience from diverse fields, seek further information and consider all possible alternatives and come out with some new and unique solution. This happens when they have open minds. A saying goes the human mind is like a parachute, it is useful only when it is open. Such a work culture is very conducive for problem solving which is the aim of all creativity. Their persistence will reward them. Such actions observed by their team members enthuse them and a spirit of adventure will bring about better solutions faster. (g) Performance Management The professional manager not only ensures that his performance is at peak all times, but motivates his entire team to do it. This comes by appreciation and encouragement. If there any shortfalls he arranges for training them so that their performance improves. Thus the team members know that they are expected to perform, that they get help to do so and their effort is recognized. This is the simple path of performance management. The following seven step model will be useful:

1. Objectives/Performance standards are set. 2. These are communicated to the employees. 3. Review/monitor the above. 4. Check actual performance Vs. Standards set. 5. Identify gaps. 6. Jointly decide on corrective action, if needed. 7. Reset objectives for next period

Macro issues a) Evolving Key Success Factors (KSF) Upfront: In order to provide complete stability to fulfillment of goals, one needs to constantly evaluate from time to time , the consideration of what will constitute the success of completing a project and assessing its success before completion. The KSF should be evolved based on a basic consensus document (BCD). KSF will also provide an input to effective exit strategy (EES). Exit here does not mean exit from the project but from any of the drilled down elemental activities which may prove to be hurdles rather than contributors. Broad level of KSF should be available at the conceptual stage and should be firmed up and detailed out during the planning stage. The easiest way would be for the team to evaluate each step for chances of success on a scale of ten. KSF should be available to the management duly approved by the project manager before execution and control stages. KSF rides above normal consideration of time and cost at the levels encompassing client expectation and management perception time and cost come into play as subservient to these major goals. b) Empowerment Title (ET) ET reflects the relative importance of members of the organization at three levels: i) Team members empowered to work within limits of their respective allocated responsibilities the major change from bureaucratic systems is an expectation from these members to innovate and contribute to time and cost. ii) Group leaders are empowered additionally to act independently towards client expectation and are also vested with some limited financial powers. iii) Managers are empowered further to act independently but to maintain a scientific balance among time, cost, expectation and perception, apart from being a virtual advisor to the top management.

c) Partnering Decision Making (PDM) PDM is a substitute to monitoring and control. A senior with a better decision making process will work closely with the project managers as well as members to plan what best can be done to manage the future better from past experience. The key here is the active participation of members in the decision making process. The ownership is distributed among all irrespective of levels the term equally should be a\voided here since ownership is not quantifiable. The right feeling of ownership is important. This step is most difficult since junior members have to respond and resist to being pushed through sheer innovation and performance this is how future leaders would emerge. The PDM process is made scientific through:

i) Earned value management system (EVMS) ii) Budgeted cost of work scheduled (BCWS) iii) Budgeted cost of work performed (BCWP) iv) Actual cost of work performed(ACWP)

d) Management By Exception (MBE) No news is good news. If a member wants help he or she locates a source and proposed to the manager only if such help is not accessible for free. Similarly, a member should believe that a team leaders silence is a sign of approval and should not provoke comments through excessive seeking of opinions. In short leave people alone and let situation perform the demanding act. The bend limit of MBE can be evolved depending on the sensitivity of the nature and size of the project. MBE provides and facilitates better implementation of effectiveness of empowerment titles .MBE is more important since organizations are moving toward multi-skilled functioning even at junior most levels.

Projectised Organizations This is one of the various models of organizations, which enterprises adopt to run their businesses depending on the policies they follow, the opportunities they want to exploit and the constraints that the environment forces on them. Most organizations follow some sort of projectisation of their activities be it manufacturing, development of a product, research, entering a market, acquiring of another company, training programmes, setting up a new plant etc. In some situations they find it advantageous to treat a set of activities requiring resources of different kinds for short periods to reach a particular stage. They call that a project. Projectised operations have in them some are all of the following objectives, so that this business model to be useful. Accommodate discrete projects as a group in certain organizational units to facilitate monitoring and controlling performance levels at various stages. Assign priority of divisional management efforts based on Paretos law backed by statistics or rules of thumb for prevention of problems or profit growth on a group of projects in hand. Facilitate project resource assignment and subsequent adjustment especially human and information resources among the various projects. Enumerate, evaluate and implement various procedures of standardization in the form tables, charts, manuals, templates with the abundance of data that get generated across projects. Analyses of data help in identifying opportunities of making changes in similar projects. The project management capability can be enhanced perhaps with the help of the PMO, by setting objectives and measuring them with success achieved. Each project can be measured for its maturity level. Enhancement of the levels of different projects does become a motivational factor for performance enhancement. A system of internal benchmarking gets initiated almost automatically resulting in highly efficient organisation as a whole. The principles of Project Management can be extended to various traditional operational type units. The main differences between the traditional and project approach are mentioned below. Here, we would like to emphasize that no one approach can be considered the better for all businesses or at all times for the same business. However, many organizations have found the project approach worth giving a try to improve productivity. Traditional organizations We have the formal organisation structure, with departments, functions, sections having an hierarchy of managers and their assistant. All of them function on a continuous basis catering to a series of requirements issued by the planning department. An assembly of various units of their production forms a products and a variety of such products make up the business of the company. No one particular member or a department or a team is responsible for the completion of any particular product. Their creativity and innovation is particular respect of jobs. Most of them do not get exposed to other areas of operations in the organisation. They

will become specialists and be insular. Projectised organizations have teams comprising members who are responsible for completing one completely deliverable product. They will have all the resources required to do all jobs or operations to complete it. Most importantly, they have a time schedule within which all the elements of the projects have to be completed. It has been found that a sense of ownership of the project motivates them for being creative, cooperate among themselves to achieve high productivity. a) Reengineering This is a process by which managers redesign a bundle of tasks into roles and functions so that organizational effectiveness is achieved. By doing so dramatic improvements in critical measures of performance like cost, quality and service are expected. There will be a radical rethink about the business processes adopted.

A business process is any activity like inventory control, product design, orders processing, delivery systems. No reference is taken to the existing process ignoring it, an entirely new process is adopted. The following rules for reengineering are effective

i) Make changes with the outcome in mind not the tasks that result in them. ii) Make the users of the results of the process effect the change iii) Let the people on the spot decide on the solution decentralize

b) E-Engineering The term E-Engineering refers to the attempts of companies to make use of all kinds of information systems, to make their functions efficient. New information systems are installed for conducting all business processes in the organisation. The use of electronic communication within the organisation enables frequent interactions between employees and results in better communication. Meetings require their presence, but with teleconferencing a lot of time is saved. Data have repositories which are accessible, transferable and updatable instantly and used by all concerned. Cross-functional workflows make it easier to coordinate activities. The increase in efficiency makes the organisation to meet customers requirements faster.

All these result in widespread utilization of knowledge in the organisation. It helps in creating and making available high quality of information. The information system using intranet and internet solutions carry on their regular activities on line.