Hyten Corporation Asigment Answer

1. Identify and describes five major problems facing f acing the management of Hyten Corporation in accepting formalized project management ?

There are many problems faced by Hyten Corporation due to accepting formalized project management. One of the major problems, there will be conflict between functional manager and project manager. There should be at the same grade level and neither one has authority over the other, but let’s say there is a situation where the two of them disagree as to either direction or quality of work. This situation will lead the functional employee in an awkward position. Any employee will have the tendency of bending toward the individual who signs his or her promotion and evaluation form. This can influence the project manager into recommending an evaluation below par regardless of how the functional employee performs. There is also the situation where the employee is on the project for only a couple of  weeks, and spends most of his or her time working alone, never getting a chance to know the project manager. The project manager will probably give the functional employee an average rating, even though the employee has done an excellent job. There also will be affected when the project manage allows personal feelings to influence his or her evaluation of a functional employee. A project manager who knows the functional employee personally might be tempted to give a strong or weak recommendation regardless of performance. There will be personnel problems involved that project management might bring. The example of situation that might occur is the project manager makes an excellent recommendation to the functional manager. The functional employee is aware of the appraisal and feels he or she should be given an above average pay increase to match the excellent job appraisal, but the functional manager fails to do so. One personnel manager from another company incorporating project management ran into problems when the project manager gave an employee of one grad level responsibilities of a higher grade level. the functional manager gave an average evaluation and argued that the project manager had no business giving the functional employee added responsibility without first checking with him. Also there are some functional managers who will only give above average pay increases to those employees who stay in the functional department and make that manager look good. There also will be problem for project manager on when they should fill out his or her evaluation during or after project completion. It would have to go after project completion. That way an employee who felt unfairly evaluated would not feel tempted to screw up the

 project. If an employee felt the work wasn’t justly evaluated, the employee might decide not to show up for a few days. This few days of absence could be most crucial for timely project completion. Other than that there will be problem in handling evaluation of employees who work  on several projects at the same time. This could be a problem if employees are really enthusiastic about one project over another. They could do a terrific job on the project they are interested in and slack off on another projects. There also have functional people working on departmental jobs but charging their time to the project overheads. According to Herman Hall, director of MIS said that the current project that they are currently working on the installation of minicomputers and on-line terminals throughout the plant. These projects have been delayed by the late arrival of new equipment, employee sabotage, and various start up problems. As a result of these problems, they being six months behind schedule and the other group although on schedule is 18 months from their scheduled completion date. They break up the current project teams and let those projects fall further behind schedule, it will be difficult at this time to put together another project team. When they introduce the formalized project management at this time it will be more complicated for the employees and it’s hard to implement because they are already in problems. If they put together a staff for the project, it might take up to two years to complete an adequate information system. Problems arise from the facts that it will take time to design a system that will draw data from all the functional areas. This design work will have to be done before the actual programming and testing could be accomplished. Finally there would be debugging period when they receive feedback fron the user on any flaws in the system or enhancements

that might be needed. They could not provide computer support to an ‘overnight’ change to project management. According to Bob Gustwell, scheduling manager said there will be a problem for employees to fight against any changes in management style. Employees are very hard to accept the new changes in corporation and it will take time to get support from the employees. This is usual behavioural problem when there are changes in management. John Rich, director of engineering is fully rejected formalized project management. For engineering department being very technical, just cant take direction from anyone outside the department. He said the project office will start to skimp on specifications just to save time and dollars. Their products are too technical to allow schedules and project costs to

engineering results. Engineering has always directed the projects and they cannot accept the project manager to involve in their department. There will be problem between engineering department and project management. Engineering department activities are catered around highly unpredictable circumstances, which sometimes involve rapidly changing priorities related to production function. They must respond quickly and appropriately to maintenance activities and also responsible for carrying out critical preventive maintenance and plant construction projects. But project management would hinder their activities because project management responsibilities would burden our manpower with additional tasks. Project

management would weaken the department’s functional specialization because it would require cross utilization of resources, manpower and negotiation for the services critical to plant engineering. Besides that the project management require cost commitment reports at each decision state to enable him or her to judge when costs are getting out of control. To provide cost commitment report they require additional personnel and expertise in comptroller department. The problem is they have to maintain personnel necessary to perform added duties, responsibilities and expertise required. By implementing formalized project management all departments have extra tasks to be given and expertise required to write report.

6. Discuss whether formal project management give employees more room for personal growth? By implementing formal project management to the corporation will give employees more room for personal growth. Formal project management can improve the chances of  completing a project successfully. By implement this formal project management employees tend to learn more new things and tend to work in a formal way. There also will be proper formal communication among employees. Employees tend to learn extra skill and learn new things. For example the employee should learn on how to write the cost commitment report which needs extra skill. Other than that the formal project management will provide more structured workplace where the employees tend to work in structured work and lead them finishing the task on time.

7. Explain whether the organizational personnel focusing more on the problems or merits of project management? The organizational personnel focus more on the problems rather than merits of  projects managements. Most of the department has problems with formalized projects management. As

9. Discuss the need to sell the idea of project management prior to its implementation? The corporation should sell the idea of project management to each department so that each department will have the basic knowledge on project management before they implement it. The corporation can sell the idea of project management by providing training and seminars to each department. By doing this the employees wont feel awkward when the

corporation introducing the formal project management. The employees will be ready and prepared before the implementation of the formal project management. The corporation should convince the employees and giving talks on the advantage of the formal project management. This lead to change the employees mind and all departments will be prepared to face the challenges after implementation of the project management. By selling ideas of  project management to all department, at least the employees get to know the formal project management structure.