Challenges and their Solutions in Project Management

Question: Discuss about the Challenges and their Solutions in Project Management. Answer: Key challenges in project management It is seen that, even though with the proper planning in place and alignment of goals, the rate of success of the projects cannot reach the desired level. One of the reasons can be taken as the organizational structure and culture. The structure of the organization can come in the way of the as an obstacle or it can support it to be successful. As the structure of the organization helps in sharing of the different resources for the project therefore, different organizational structures like (like, Functional organizational structure, matrix organizational structure and projectised organizational structure) (Niazi et al. 2013). In case of functional organizational structure, the organization consists of the divisions depending on the functionalities. In matrix structure, the responsibility of the project is shared between the project manager and other functional manager that consequently creates confusion for the project team members. According to Harper (2015), the projectised organizational structure is helpful in achieving the best results for any project. Since, the team members have the clear idea about project and the personnel to report for any issue, therefore it can be said that in projectised structure the centralized authority can help avoiding the conflicts and confusions and attain better success rate of the project. Another issue that needs to be addressed for the successful competition of the project is the, management of the employee expectations. The materialistic and other expectations drive the team members in a project management team to deliver better productivity to complete the project successfully. These expectations are connected with the job duties, salary and compensation. The expectations are not always fulfilled due to the inefficient communication between the leadership and the project team members. Again Keil, Lee and Deng (2013) argued that, to resolve the issues related to the expectations it is important to integrate the expectation of both the leadership and team members. In addition to this, open environment to express or communicate the expectations, recognition of the expectations, providing job security scope of growth to the team members. The explanation of solutions stated in the previous section In order to manage and fulfill the expectations of the team members of the project team it is important for a project manager and a leader to utilize their integrity skills. This will help the project manager to manage and get idea about the expectations of the employees or the team members of the project development team (Niazi et al. 2013). The employee oriented project management approach states that project management should concentrate on dynamics, experience and human Psychology instead of solely depending on the processes. Successful project managers concentrates on understanding and learning about the way people function in an organization or say as a team member. The integrity of the leaders encourages the team members and the employees working under them to trust them (leaders). This skill is also important to take any harsh or unpopular decisions in order to complete the undertaken project in scheduled time, budget and best quality. This skill is also important to create trust between the different members of the team (Maylor and Sderlund 2015). In addition to this, people in the team cannot afford risks in their career and uncertainty in the project; therefore they are hypothesizing on the leaders accomplishments. Later on, they require some route with which to settle on a choice in a particular situation for another project. In case of projectised organizational structure, the project manager becomes the only authority to report about any issues while executing different tasks related to the project. Therefore, the leader or the project manager must possess and utilize his/her motivational skills (Gu et al. 2014). This is important for the other team members as the project manager directly evaluates their functionality, therefore when the project manager observes any issues in the project; he needs to provide feedback and motivate the employee to attain the desired results. This can help the project manger to complete the project in scheduled time and budget with the best possible quality. This also helps in creating the positive interactions between the client organizations, project manager the project development team. Moreover the integrity skill of the leader also enables the, leader and the project manager to be responsive against different adverse situations in the whole project lifecycle (Keil, Lee and Deng 2013). If there is situation of crisis for a team member then this skills help the project manager to overcome from that situation. References Gu, V.C., Hoffman, J.J., Cao, Q. and Schniederjans, M.J., 2014. The effects of organizational culture and environmental pressures on IT project performance: A moderation perspective.International Journal of Project Management,32(7), pp.1170-1181. Harper, C., 2015.Organizations: Structures, processes and outcomes. Routledge. Keil, M., Lee, H.K. and Deng, T., 2013. Understanding the most critical skills for managing IT projects: A Delphi study of IT project managers.Information Management,50(7), pp.398-414. Kerzner, H.R., 2013.Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley Sons. Maylor, H. and Sderlund, J., 2015. Project management research: Addressing integrative challenges.Designs, Methods and Practices for Research of Project Management. Farnham, Surrey: Gower, pp.11-19. Niazi, M., Mahmood, S., Alshayeb, M., Riaz, M.R., Faisal, K. and Cerpa, N., 2013, October. Challenges of project management in Global Software Development: Initial results. InScience and Information Conference (SAI), 2013(pp. 202-206). IEEE