Reflection On Project Management

One of the lessons I have carried from this course as a project manager is that project management success in an organization is highly dependent on an effective organizational communication style, especially in the face of globalization of the project management profession. Organizational communications capabilities have great influence on how projects are conducted. As as a consequence, project managers in distant locations are able to more effectively communicate with relevant stakeholders within the organizational structure to facilitate decision making. In almost every study, communication-related issues are the most frequent problems a project manager has on a project, not leaving out my organization I work for. It is also vividly that

I found out that as a project manager, I should not focus on dealing with problems but rather preventing them altogether. I can remember vividly some years back that even after a strong probability showed that an El Niño phenomena was about to hit our project area; our project manager went a head with a software installation project that we were working on as a team. Not withstanding, the floods were every where and our project that was to take a week came to a stand still and took four more weeks and also some of our work was damaged by the water. Technically, we had to start the project again, resulting in the decrease of the value of risk management. Consequently, if our project manager had an effective risk management in place, then it could have helped to increase the probability and impact of positive risks or opportunities. I also noticed that when we eliminate threats and increase opportunities, the estimate for work can decrease in terms of cost, time, scope and schedule/milestone. It is also necessary to determine at a high level the amount and areas of potential risk on the project. Nevertheless, the risk management efforts should be appropriate to the size and complexity of the project, as well as the experience and skill level of the project team. For example, in our organization, we use probability and impact matrix as a standard rating system to promote a common understanding of what each risk rating

All along, I had a perception that they have the same meaning. So, a contract can be considered as an agreement but an agreement would not necessarily be a contract. Working in a retail industry, procurement management is the heartbeat of our organization. Any project that we carry has procurement management. Contracts are always signed between project manager and either with vendors, customers, government and/or other stakeholders. Procurement is the formal process to obtain goods and services (PMI, 2013, p. 355) and in our company, there is a department that handles and controls procurements. So, when a project is planned and scope analyzed, the procurement department gets involved in the project to manage the procurement process. Once the decision is finalized to procure goods or services from an outside source/ vendors, our project manager makes a plan of the process and a procurement statement of work. A procurement manager then decides what kind of contract and procurement document should be used. It is up to the procurement department to review the scope of work for completeness. Afterwards, the prospective sellers take action and the buyer (my company) waits for their responses. The prospective vendors carefully review our statement of work and all terms of the proposed contract and at the same time, vendor responds to the procurement documents. At