Project management
By Stewart Reid
In engineering you will frequently encounter project management situations when developing ideas. It is important you know why project management is often useful and what responsibilities you have as a project manager. The responsibilities will also extend to controversial topics such as the environment and ethical and moral principles. In this essay I will describe the role of the project manager and their responsibilities.
Details about Project Management
An important part of the engineering business is project management. Project management is the use of planning, organising and controlling of assets, processes and people in the service of a goal. This usually involves a project manager and his team members. The project manager has overall responsibility for the project and his team. The primary aim of project management is too achieve the project goals and to optimise the needed inputs and combine them to further the aims of the project. (1)
Project managers have a number of responsibilities. The project requirements need to be specified and the number of resources needed need to be decided upon and then ordered. The project goals and the resources used also need to be agreed upon with bosses of the project manager. A final plan needs to be decided upon before going forward with the project. The project manager must lead and motivate the team and ensure relations between team members are good. The team must be informed of all of aims and the processes required. The project manager must manage the progress of the project and ensure costs are kept within budget. The bosses and other people with a stake must be regularly informed of progress.
There are many qualities that are sought after when...
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...efrain from taking bribes and attempt to prevent team members from accepting bribes. (6)
When you are a project manager in an engineering situation you must take into account the environment. Engineering situations often impact the environment. The environmental consequences of your project must be taken into account. Regulations relating to the environment must be met and your team must be made aware of rules relating to the environment. Situations in engineering where the environment can be damaged are common and this should be prevented. There are many laws that regulate what you can do. For example if you were developing a vehicle, there are certain laws that would need to be met. For example numerous hazardous materials that were once used in cars are now banned. (7) It is the project manager’s responsibility that these laws are not broken.
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An efficient Project manager should be aware of the necessary critical skills, Should learn to communicate effectively with every level, manage the resources in the right way, put strict processes in place, delegate tasks accordingly, do adequate testing, keep realistic expectations, never assume and don’t be afraid of what might go wrong.
Gray, C., Larson, E. (2008). Project Management: The managerial Process. New York, NY: The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.
The project manager needs to concentrate on executing the phase along with the planning phase. The quality of the product needs to be checked and also the stakeholders need to be managed. Monitoring and controlling Process (Schwalbe, 2014): The project manager needs to monitor the project team from beginning of the project to the end of the project, needs to verify if any issues are being solved and also needs to check whether the objective needs are being met or not. In this phase they need to report the performance of the project and if required changes need to be done to keep the project on track.
In this assignment, a practicing engineer that has experience in working in project management was interviewed. The purpose of the interview is to increase my understanding of what engineers do at the workplace and to educate future engineers on how to become successful in their fields.
The project manager is the key person responsible for the overall project and serves as the steering mechanism for the project team (Cornell Project Management Methodology, n.d.). In order to become an effective project manager, there are certain skill sets that are required to set one on a path to project management. Organizations like the Project Management Institute serve as the conduit for training and certifying project managers.
The project manager leads the project and provides vision, direction and encouragement. The project manager takes lead in project planning to determine the schedule and budgets neces-sary to meet the project objectives and is responsible for delivering the project once the pro-ject has been approved by senior management. The project manager is also responsible for the project support team.
The projects in today’s world are given a lot of importance and it will continue to grow in the coming years. There are a lot of companies which do not have production, but all of them do have projects. There are a lot of books which have been published on which related to planning and managing the projects. The one of the most important one was published by the author Eli Goldratt in his book ‘Critical chain’. This book basically talks and shows how the application of theory of constraints in the field of project management. The novel is basically based on one of the MBA classes in America where a number of ideas are developed in discussions among the students and the lecturers. The lecturer is basically fighting for a tenure with the president of the university who expects a downturn in the executive MBA. The lecturer who teaches project management has a word with one the senior colleagues and project management was the right topic to teach. There were three students who were placed in the project management team of their company which manufactures electronic products. The students are enrolled in this MBA class along with other students, here they discover a new approach to project management which is known as the
This study aims to find the relationship between leadership performance style and project success and to research that whether the project success is influenced by leadership style. According to Belout and Gauvreau (2004), “Nowadays, project management has become a key activity in most modern organizations. Projects usually have a wide variety of objectives, involve numerous internal and external actors, and are conducted in various activity sectors”. Many researchers have agreed that project leadership is one of the most crucial elements of a project’s success. There are many views on leadership and according to Dulewicz and Higgs (2005), leadership has been studied more than any other aspect of human behavior. Higgs (2003) identified six
A project manager should be aware of the key challenges and threats an organization would face as well as he/she should have the skills to tackle the crises effectively and efficiently. In addition to that, a project manager should also be able to convey the thoughts and ideas in a convenient manner who is responsible to make a framework for an effective communication to ensure clear communication between the team members even though the style of communication would be different based on the situation.
1. What is the difference between Introduction In this paper, we will talk about the Project Management. the role of project management is becoming more and more important and valuable in order to make the project a success. Consequently, it has now become even more significant to avoid the reasons for a failure of a project beforehand.
Project management is known as the discipline of planning, organizing, motivating, and controlling resources to achieve specific goals. In the diagram to the left in the picture you can see that as a project manager you are the center of either a great accomplishment or a major failure. Some of the major factors to being a successful project manager would be a person that is a great manage several projects or responsibilities and scope issues on an every day basis. If you have a pr...
“Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to organisational and project activities to achieve the aims of an organisation through projects” (PMI, 2003).
When planning a new project, how the project will be managed is one of the most important factors. The importance of a managers will determine the success of the project. The success of the project will be determined by how well it is managed. Project management is referred to as the discipline that entails the processes of carefully planning, organizing, controlling, and motivating the organization resources so as to foster and facilitate the achievement of specific established and desired goals and meet the specific criteria of success required in the organization (Larson, 2014). Over the course of this paper I will be discussing and analyzing the importance of project management.
Engineering Management is a specialized form of management that applies engineering principles to business practice. It combines the technical problem-solving skills that an engineer develops early in his career with the organizational, operational, and administrative abilities of business management in order to effectively and efficiently manage complex projects and problems from conception to completion. The discipline provides engineers the tools to systematically address issues related to design and operation of complex systems as well as develop skills specifically required in technology-based, project-driven enterprises. Examples of such skills include leadership, planning, scheduling, logistics,
Project management involves all activities that encompass scheduling, planning, and controlling projects. A successful project manager ensure that an organization’s resources are being used both efficiently and effectively. Most projects need to be uniquely developed require a sense of customization and the ability to adapt to any posed challenges. The scope of effective project management includes defining what the project is and what is being expected to be accomplished. Projects are imposed to fulfill a certain need and project managers must have the ability to create the proper definition. Goals and the means used to attain those goals have to be clearly stated. Project Managers must also have the ability to plan