Most people think that project succeed is only because of the project manager. However, there are lot elements that can be the keys to make the project meets the objectives. Before I analyze more, my friend told me that based on her experience, the project can succeed if there are good team members, trust, good leadership, honest and good plan. Then, based on my project experiences and my observations, what she said is quite similar.
1. Project Manager
S/he is a key of project. As a leader, a project manager I think has to be expert. Though a project manager has not to have technical skills but in my opinion, it could be better if the project manager understand at least major of tecnical skills. Because as project manager, if you have some knowledge, your team members will respect you more. You will find easier to assign the tasks to your team member, direct, support or facilitate them. At least, before you are appointed to be a project manager, you better study first about the project and what the skills and knowledge required on your project. My brother shared his experience in construction project, he is a team member and is only young engineer, so he has to be directed and supported by his supervisor. However, his supervisor though has lot experiences and quite senior, he does have enough skills, knowledge, experiences in construction project. His background is IT. Thus, because of his lack of knowledge and skill, my best brother often finds some issues related to his jobs, and he has to find the solution by himself because his supervisor cannot help him. Even sometime, my brother has to deal the problem with the client without any help of his supervisor.
So, based on this case, a project manager or supervisor at least has to have good knowledge and skills.
A project manager has to be trusted by her/his team members. That is why, first, s/he has to be good in skills and knowledge. No wonder, PMBOK stated that the best power of Project Manager is "expert". Because if you are an expert, your team members will trust you. To be trusted, you also need to be honest. Because the dishonest person will not be trusted by people. Moreover, a project manager also has to trust the team member. In my opinion, a project manager that believes in Theory X McGregor will face more conflict than a project manager who believes in Theory Y McGregor. Because people need to be trusted that they can perform their work and they are competence enough to finish their task. As PM, if you keep asking and directing the task to your team member though you know that they are still in progressing their work and actually it is still under control, people a.k.a your team member will get bored or annoyed and reluctant and sometimes in the worst case they will leave their job and find another job. Sometimes being a X PM will be useful if you are directing young people that lack of experience, skills and knowledge. Because you have to be firm and supportive to them. However, if your team members have lot experience, skills and knowledge, you cannot do the same. You have to trust your team member, just asking them the progress occasionally not too often. You better create a RAM (responsibility assignment matrix) for them, trust them and monitor them.
Back to the power of being an expert, actualy you do not have to be a 100% expert, if you are appointed to handle a project that you are inexperienced in that particular project for instance, you have to manage the event, and you are never experiencing in handling the event, you can do brainstorming to other project manager that succeed in managing the event, you can ask her/him what are success factors and failure factors. If you are willing to learn and get some feedbacks and you can succeed.
A project manager has to be a taugh person. S/he knows what have to be done and how to do it. As project manager, you have to assign the task to your team members. If you do not know the detailed scope of work and the characteristics/skills of your team work, how can you assign them to the task. I have an experience as team member that my project manager actualy is inexperience in managing that kind of project. She did not know what have to be done to meet the project objectives, and she cannot be firm to her team member. That is why at the beginning until the middle of the project, one of team member was in charge in the project. This team member controlled the project and made a decision instead of the project manager. Whilst the project manager, because of her lack of firm leadership, lack of experience in this kind of project, cannot control the whole project. She only controlled in some parts that in my opinion were not the critical parts. The worst part, every regular meeting, the project manager did not lead the meeting, but the project team led the meeting. The project manager kept busy typing on her laptop, created minutes of meeting, emailed the project stakeholders instead of leading the meeting and discussing the key points or project status. The problems of her that she did not review and discussed the project status together with the meeting attendants. She also did not create first the meeting agenda, so the 4 hours meeting did not perform well. If we discussed only the important things and focused on our agenda instead of being busy working alone with own laptop, the meeting would not take too long and more than 4 hours.
Thus, based on some cases, in order to manage project successfully: a project manager needs to have some knowledge or skills related to the project. A project manager has to be honest and trusted by team members. A project manager has to be a firm leader and be organized.
2. Team Member
All the points of the project manager as mentioned above has to be supported by a solid team member. A good project manager may not succeed in managing project if s/he is not supported by her/his team member. But a not good project manager can succeed in completing the project with the solid team members' support.
As long as you have a solid and competence team member, your project will run smoothly. I acted as a Project Manager last year for two days international workshop. I only had 3 team members who really supported me to host the event. We handled starting from the marketing and communication through speakers, participants and sponsors without using any event organizer. We also managed by ourselves the venue, catering, seminar kit, etc. We only need additional people on the D day to help us to be LOs. The event ran successfully, the participants satisfied, there was no any major problem occurred, the speakers satisfied and both speakers and participants right after the event asked us to host another workshop within 3 months. Without the support of my limited team members, the event would not run successfully.
Another example of the role of team member, in this case I acted as team member. My project manager may be a good project manager in other type of project, but in project that I was involved, she is not too good. Because she is not a firm leader, she did not create RAM for her team member, thus, there was lot overlapping tasks, unorganized monitoring, and the team members have to have own initiative and to solve the problem by themselves. Actually, she was lucky that her team members had high responsible, were very competence in performing their tasks and supported the project, thus, the project succeeded. In external parties opinion, the project succeeded because of the role of project manager, but in internal parties, the project succeeded because the role of the whole team members. I strongly believe, if she did not have any support of her team members, for instance the team member resigns, the project would be chaos. So, the role of team members actually is bigger than project manager's role. As project manager, you have to select high responsible and high motivation team members to help you perform the works. Because without them, you will be nothing!
3. A good planning
To create a good planning means you have to be a competence project manager, also have good team members because initial team members will help you in planning the project. Some people quite underestimate the planning in particular in construction project. Most project manager in this industry only focus on schedule plan, cost plan and quality plan. As long as they have these three plans, they will start their project immediately. Though they do not have communication plan or risk management plan yet. That is why, many problems occur in executing process. It is not only because the construction projects are more complex than other projects, it might because in Indonesia, project management is not well implemented. Practitioners in construction project believe in best practice and learning by doing.
I have interviewed some friends who work in construction project. Some of them told me that major problems occurred because there is no good risk management plan. Though their PMO already planned the project risks including all risks identified, risks rank and risk responses, but there are lot new risks that are not identified in planning process, occur in executing process. The risk management plan is created by risk department, but, those persons who created the plan almost never visited the construction site, never updated the risk into risk register as well. Furthermore, most of the risk response plan cannot implement in field work, that was why the project manager and team member had to respond the risk by themselves and did not follow the respond plan as stated in PM plan. In Indonesia, many construction firms hire the project manager outside the organization. Thus, planning is created by engineering department with or without project manager involvement. For instance, project risk management plan is created by Risk Department, people in this department identify the risk, qualify the risks and plan the risk responses without any help from people who will be involved in the project at executing process. In the result, many variances happen in construction site, many new risks happen and many risk responses cannot implement, these all problems, my friends said to me, will increase cost and project delay. They often face penalties from owner because of a not good plan.
Other friend and also based on my experience, another problem related to planning is communication plan. Before starting the project, you better create first your communication line and communication method. How many meetings, how the team members member coordinate and communicate their tasks among stakeholders, etc. Without clear communication plan, conflicts and project reworks will occur often, because that will be lot miscommunication and misunderstanding among stakeholders. My brother also experienced it, as a quality control, he found out that lots misunderstanding and miscommunication among surveyors, laboratory, clients and engineers. He often had to rework the tasks and to rewrite project report due to these problems. Rework will lead to morale decrease, and unmotivated employee will not have good performance, in the end, if this case is not solved immediately will delay the project and increase the project cost. 1. A firm, trust, honest and competence project manager that can be called Integrity and Competency.
2. A solid and high responsible team member
3. A good planning
Of course, there still are many keys behind the successful of the project. I write these three elements based on my own and my friends experiences. If you have any experiences related to project success, you can inform me so I can update my blog. Thank you for spending your time to read my blog and good luck with your project......
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