Good Example Of Project Management Term Paper

Quality Assurance

The human resource assets in an organization determine the failure or success of a business. Managing human resources effectively is one of the vital components of project management as managing people are a challenging and demanding task.
In this case, there is the requirement to hire instructors for a project management course. Some of the qualities used in making this hiring process include:
Observant and conversant: Instructors need to be observant and conversant with their teams. This is a requirement to determine how teams are performing task and how they feel about work or training. In the training sessions, instructors must practice management by walking around to physically check and hear how trainees are going about. This can be formal or informal through conversations to establish if the project is yielding positive returns. Apart from one to one instructional session, instructors may observe and discuss issues with their teams virtually using email, telephone conversations and other media.
Interpersonal skills: project managers just as instructors must possess interpersonal skills to effectively manage their teams. The type of skills required of instructors includes leadership skills, influencing power, and decision making skills.
Conflict management: As an instructor, the requirements for conflict management skills cannot be underemphasized. Some conflicts are desirable in the training process but others are not and hence, instructors should have the skills to resolve conflicts that might arise. Apart from one to one instructional session, instructors may observe and discuss issues with their teams virtually using email, telephone conversations and other media.
Appraisal: Every project requires that appraisals are provided to determine the progress of projects. Even without official project performance appraisal, instructors should seek timely project performance feedback. If a team member exhibit signs of sloppiness or lateness, it is important to establish the reason underlying such behavior. Perhaps, the might have had a family issue that caused huge distraction or was intending to leave the project. Either way the need for project appraisal skills is required depending on the complexity, length of the project, organizational policies and contract requirements among others.
In the case where some current instructors do not meet the quality standards anticipated, the only way to handle this is to train them. It is often more economical to train current employees in particular with some skills of how the organization functions than to hire new once who already posses those skills. Training can be directed towards emotional intelligence and dealing with difficult people and mirroring techniques. Taking specific skills as an individual or a team will improve the performance of both parties.
It is important to provide training in a just-in-time manner. Many organizations are providing e-learning opportunities for their employees so that they can improve their skills and master certain aspects at any time and place. This is recommended for instructors in this organization. Since the program is flexible, instructors will have a chance to sharpen their skills without interacting their activities and that of the organization. For instructors, they can partake in e-learning while providing their services to the company since it is cost effective and flexible. As long as the timing and the delivery method is appropriate, the method will work in improving the skills of employees to the required standard. It is often more economical to train current employees in particular with some skills of how the organization functions than to hire new once who already posses those skills.

Identifying risks and strategies

The college institutions is undertaking an IT project that will see to it that employees, students and customers access and maintain their own human resource information such as marital status, address and tax information. The system is beneficial in reducing the human resource personnel for the organization and providing more accurate and timely information. The new system will allow employees to enter their information directly into the system without having it through human resource departments. For instance, tax withholdings and pension plan contributions will be updated by the user himself.
Risks can be classified as market, financial, technology, people and structure. This new project seems to have associated risks spanning all the risk categories noted.

Using a risk register, the risks facing this project can be documented as follows:

No: 1
Rank 1
Risk: Acceptance of the project by the organization - Will the users in the institution accept to enter their human resource data themselves or will it be a hard idea to sell
Description: This risk is associated with the willingness of the people to accept change and adopt the new system. The system might be developed but fail to be used by the stakeholders due to their unwillingness to adopt it. As it is, the system adds extra work load to the user because it involves decentralization of the human resource department to the individual level.

Category: Market risk

No: 2
Rank 1
Risk: Resources for the development of the system – will the institution have sufficient resources to develop the new system. Here, matter such as stakeholder projections and willingness to support the project, ROI justifications, payback estimates and NPV need to be established.
Description: As it stands, this is a positive risk since the organization has the resources in terms of finances and the will to execute the project. Resources are required to gather for the design, development, implementation and testing of the system.. Human resources involved in these processes require to be paid together with training and education programs for employees, students, customers and other stakeholders using the system.

Category: Financial

No: 3
Rank 1
Risk: Technical feasibility of the project - Is this project technically feasible in terms of support of leading/bleeding edge technology, support for networks, software and hardware in use and the duration required for the technology to be obsolete
Description: There is a requirement that technical details of the project be develop and integrated in all sections of the institution to support the project. These technical aspects include networks, software and hardware and protocols for communication. Since all the stakeholders in the organization work in disparate departments with different characteristics and structures, the project will require deployment of computing resources to a greater extend. For instance, cleaners of the institution will require computers where they will be adding their details and so forth. Traditionally, cleaners have no offices with computers where they work from. Thus, the project may introduce a new project of computerizing all the segments of the organization.

Category: Technology

No: 4
Rank 1
Risk: Lack of authenticity– content entered by people is not supervised as was the case with human resource department. Description: People may misuse the new freedom by providing false information or engaging in undesirable activities. The system provides employees, people and customers freedom to enter their details some of which are sensitive and require supervisory authority. For instance tax withholdings or pension plans is guided by rules and regulations established by the organization or other authorities. Giving employees freedom to manage them without supervising them may open a window for misuse and fraudulent activities. This way, employees may enter wrong information for personal financial gains subsequently depriving the organization the financial benefits it was seeking in the first place by eliminating human resource department.

Category: People

No: 5
Rank 1

Risk: People in the organization pose a risk depending on the skills and knowledge required to execute the project.

Description: The degree of change that the new system will introduce to the organizational processes need to be considered. The new system will need to interact will many systems in the organization that covers employees, students and other stakeholders so that they are in a position to update their information directly from their end. This poses a risk on the interaction mechanisms established and existing processes in the organization that will see to it that the project succeeds. There is disparate level of knowledge of use of computing resources and the system would mean that retraining and education is required in all sectors of the institution. This is a negative risks since it involve establishment of other projects which are not intended. The system provides employees, people and customers freedom to enter their details some of which are sensitive and require supervisory authority.
Category: Structure

References

Schwalbe, K. (2014). Information Technology Project Management, Seventh Edition. Cengage.
Taylor, J. (2004). Managing Information Technology Projects: Applying Project Management Strategies to Software, Hardware, and Integration Initiatives. American Management Association.