15315 Project Management Principles | Assessment Answer

Answer:

Introduction

As a project management professional, I am glad that so far I have learned a lot in my schooling endeavors as well as in projects that I have participated in. However, I believe I have just gotten started; like a child getting into upper grade; while I believe I have gained significant technical skills and knowledge in project management, I feel that the real deal is in practical applicable skills and more importantly, the soft skills necessary to become an effective project management professional. This PDP is a honest assessment of the self, as well as an itinerary and plan on how I will improve my skills based on a self assessment and a skills gap determination, to match my future ambitions as a project management professional. My PDP goal is to hone my technical project management skills, gain extra industry standard qualifications and certifications, and improve on my soft skills in order to enhance my overall competencies and effectiveness as a professional development manager.

Career Goals and Ambitions

I have high ambitions to get into a senior project management position within five years and become a key decision maker in a large organization, most preferably, a publicly listed company; this is because I believe that the project oriented company is the company of the future; it is the company that will become successful and competitive. My skills as a project management professional will be useful to such an organization. Later on, I wish to pass on and share my knowledge and skills to upcoming project management professionals and to promote the profession as much as I can, by becoming a senior member of the national or regional project management body, such as the project management institute and conducting talks, training, and mentoring lessons. To achieve these lofty ideals, I wish to earn the highest professional competencies and qualifications and also improve my soft skills since I believe these are crucial for my effectiveness. The certifications and qualifications I want to attain are industry standard, and apart from improving my skills and offering me new technical and practical competencies, will enhance my reputation and employability in th field of project management.  My skills development will occur in phase, acquiring technical skills and certifications and using the gained skills in my employment at a practical level to internalize them before seeking extra certifications. In the next one year, I wish to complete the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification; I believe this should be my foundation course in industry standard training. My college education in the field of project management has been academic; this course (PMP, will provide me with the necessary skills and competencies needed to become a competent project management professional.

After 18 months, I want to start pursuing certification in PRINCE 2, undertaking PRINCE 2 foundation and the PRINCE 2 practitioner certifications; these I hope to complete within a year after commencing the training. In these certifications as well, I will study part time and use the internet and online learning to learn at my personal pace (applying project management approaches in my studies!) and complete the course while practicing the skills so learned in an employment environment. After 2-3 years in employment, I expect to have gained the necessary experience and skills to get a senior position/ promotion or be in charge at least of a medium to large project. After three years, I wish to embark on an MBA course, which I will undertake while also pursuing another project management certification related to IT, specifically, Project Management in IT Security (PMITS); the world is becoming ever computerized, and businesses and organizations are increasingly using Information and Communications Technology (ICT) resources to gain competitivenesses and meet their business and financial objectives; in all these, especially with the advent of cloud computing and big data, security is paramount, and so I believe the PMITS course will give me the technical skills to manage such projects. The MBA course with project management will provide me with the necessary skills in business and management as I have an ambition to become a senior decision maker in a large organization in a period between 10 and 15 years from now. The MBA will provide me with business oriented perspectives to make me a good manager, leader, and decision maker and help the organization(s) that I will work with adopt the project oriented organizational structure and culture. Currently, MBA prograns have become increasingly focused towards project management (Burnsed, 2011; Coolman, 2017).

Apart from the highly important technical skills and competencies in project management, I also recognize the equally important role that soft skills, especially leadership plays in project success and in making one a successful team leader and player (Azim et al., 2010). Projects create changes; projects start with an objective, for instance, changing a software system. To achieve the objective, plans are developed to implement the changes that are desired and keep stakeholders involved. Execution of th plan results in the desired change. Change is an important and inevitable outcome of projects; because of this, the project manager works in a unique environment with temporary structures and teams. As such, while management and leadership are complementary, they are markedly different. Manager, including the project manager deals with complexities involved n managing projects, including developing and executing project plans; leader address change (Krahn & Hartman,2004). The role of the project manager as well as that of a project leader are significant and complementary because the project manager also has to be a project leader, and a leader requires specific and unique practical skills and competencies in effective leadership to lead and manage change for projects to succeed (Cserháti and Szabó, 2014). If change is introduced in organizations, the environments in which these projects are managed will also experience increasing change: project manager are thus required to not only apply skills and competencies associated with management, but also to a significant degree, use leadership skills and competencies to ensure project success. The project manager has a broad role, but  which is perhaps defined in a very narrow sense.

Based on what I have studied so far and the projects I have been involved with, including a business expansion project plan, I feel that I need to acquire and hone skills in the following areas of leadership competencies as relates project management;

People management

Conflict resolution

Risk management

Influencing, and

Project control  

People management in the context of project management is crucial for successful project delivery and change management because people are inherently resistant to change (De Bakker,  Boonstra,  & Wortmann, 2010); to ensure the desired changes happen, the project manager needs the requisite soft leadership skills to manage people. People can be fickle, with beliefs, emotions, ego, and perspectives; as a project manager, I need high level skills to manage these human characteristics in order to create a shared vision among teams, deal with their hesitancy to adopt change, and get them to do their best in ensuring the desired changes are successfully undertaken. Based on my experiences, this is an area I need to improve on a lot. Conflicts are also inevitable in project teams, because of human qualities that make machines sometimes better companions; machines will do what they are told, people will either question what they are asked to do or do it as they interpret. This creates conflicts and conflicts and disagreements must be effectively managed to ensure a shared vision is achieved when handling projects. All projects have risks; they may succeed, fail, or succeed only partially. Without risk, organizations cannot define their future objectives; on reason many projects, especially large scale IT projects fail is because risks are not managed effectively. Practical skills in how to manage risks will greatly enhance my competencies as a project manager and as a future senior decision maker in organizations. Influencing is an area I need to improve on; it is a key competency when it comes to getting stakeholders and even team members to take certain positions. As a project manager, I carry a heavy weight of getting stakeholders to adopt my plans, accept changes that I initiate, and get team members to do more, such as work overtime to ensure project objectives are achieved. Having excellent influencing skills will make me ensure desired changes are achieved by influencing how stakeholders perceive project management and how organizations ought to run projects. I believe many projects fail because at some stage, there is a loss of control of important aspects including the project plan, scope, or the triple constraints. I feel I need practical leadership competencies in project control to achieve my future ambitions and goal

Assessment of the Current level and Standards of Chosen Competencies and the Desired Levels

The self analysis is based on a personal evaluation against industry standards; I give myself scores based on a honest opinion in the range between 1 and 5, where 1 is the lowest score and 5 the highest

based on the above analysis that was done using a weighted method where different aspects are weighted (awareness is weighted at  25%, knowledge at 25%|, and practical application at 50%) my self evaluation shows that based on the minimum desired competency score in the various project competency areas, my knowledge gap is about 30% and I need to improve on the practical aspects of these skills and their application. The priority areas in terms of score and gap (in decreasing order) include conflict resolution, project control, influencing, people management, and risk management competencies.

Development schedule 

The schedule is shown in the WBS shown below, along  with the milestones and deliverables

Management Approaches to Achieve Objectives 

Tye plans and actions I am taking and plan to take in future are risky and require effective management of the inherent risks, the time, costs, and require communication as well as negotiation and procurement. For the risks, I believe a $ 3000 investment in the PMP certification is worth all the risk as it gives practical skills and a certificate of competence at the end. To manage my time, I undertake the training part time and through distance learning and devote at last 12 hours per week to studying PMP. In my spare time, I read self help books and devote at least an hour every morning to read a book. The practical skills are being gained undertaking the business expansion project and I communicated effectively with the team, and negotiated to be allowed to be involved in the risk management task as well as in resolving conflicts to assist the team member assigned that role.

Reflection 

Undertaking the business expansion project so far has brought mixed results; the team has been successful in following project management principles such as developing a plan, assigning roles, and setting goals and objectives as well as a schedule. However, practical aspects, including completing tasks within time and on budget as well as scope management and risk management have not met objectives. For instance, developing objectives, project plan, and assigning roles was supposed to take two days; we took three days.  I realized am not very effective at resolving risks and working cohesively within a diverse team; however, I have done a self evaluation and I am going to have a go again until I have improved. The experience has been enlightening, with challenges, such as managing time, negotiating courses for action, and communicating my vision. At least I have been able to effectively communicate y vision and with other team members and get their points of view, but not without glitches.

References 

Aramyan, P. (2016). Project controls: their value in project management. [online] Project Management Blog: Tips & Tricks | Easy Projects. Available at: https://explore.easyprojects.net/blog/what-are-project-controls-why-are-they-so-important-in-project-management-and-how-to-deal-with-them [Accessed 4 May 2018].

Azim, S., Gale, A., Lawlor?Wright, T., Kirkham, R., Khan, A. and Alam, M. (2010). The importance of soft skills in complex projects. International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, 3(3), pp.387-401.

Coolman, A. (2017). Getting a Master's Degree in Project Management: To Do or Not To Do. [online] Wrike.com. Available at: https://www.wrike.com/blog/getting-a-masters-degree-in-project-management-to-do-or-not-to-do/ [Accessed 4 May 2018].

Cserháti, G. and Szabó, L. (2014). The relationship between success criteria and success factors in organisational event projects. International Journal of Project Management, 32(4), pp.613-624.

De Bakker, K., Boonstra, A., & Wortmann, H. (2010). Does risk management contribute to IT project success? A meta-analysis of empirical evidence. International Journal of Project Management. 28, 493-503.'EdX' (2018). Leadership and Management for PM Practitioners in IT. [online] edX. Available at: https://www.edx.org/course/leadership-management-pm-practitioners-uwashingtonx-pm-it-003x [Accessed 4 May 2018].

Krahn, J. & Hartman, F. T. (2004). Important leadership competencies for project managers: the fit between competencies and project characteristics. Paper presented at PMI® Research Conference: Innovations, London, England. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.

Makar, A. (2013). Get your employer to pay PMP exam and training costs. [online] TechRepublic. Available at: https://www.techrepublic.com/blog/it-consultant/get-your-employer-to-pay-pmp-exam-and-training-costs/ [Accessed 4 May 2018].

Pant, I. and Baroudi, B. (2008). Project management education: The human skills imperative. International Journal of Project Management, 26(2), pp.124-128.

Saladis, F. and Kerzner, H. (2013). Bringing the pmbok guide to life. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, pp.70-71.

'Welligntone' (2014). How to Increase your Influence as a Project Manager - Wellingtone. [online] Wellingtone. Available at: https://www.wellingtone.co.uk/increase-influence-as-project-manager/ [Accessed 4 May 2018].

Zadeh, M., Dehghan, R., Ruwanpura, J. and Jergeas, G. (2016). An Index to Assess Project Management Competencies in Managing Design Changes. International Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, [online] 5(1), pp.11-15. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304498199_An_Index_to_Assess_Project_Management_Competencies_in_Managing_Design_Changes [Accessed 4 May 2018].