Project management is a system/contingency approach to organization and management; it applies elements of classical and behavioral management and helps to achieve the goal. In the case of ‘project firecracker’ the proposal given by Tom Zuma must have been approached at a strategic level and the following should have been done to conclude whether the option should be accepted or turned down.
It is important to involve a single, defendable purpose or end item which needs to be delivered at the end of a project and therefore there should have been a clear-cut expectation setting done with Tom in terms of cost, schedule, and performance requirements. There should have been a brainstorming session in order to encompass new ideas, discuss the approach, technology requirements, significant uncertainty and the kind of risk involved. It is important to involve the senior management/stakeholders to assess the possibility of the project according to the above discussed parameters hence the same should have been done to decide the response that had to be given to Tom for his proposal.
According to the decision that would have been taken on the basis of initial analysis, Tom should have been informed about the decision of the company, in case if Tom's proposal was worth discussing after a few changes, those changes should have been communicated as well. Hence befall starting any project it is important to analyze the Golden challenges and take opinion from the stakeholders to decide whether to go ahead with a particular project or not.
NC has done a fairly decent job and has grown to that level where it can cater to various lines of business in its own niche, however in order to ensure that there are various successfully operating processes within the organization they must start operating as project oriented organization (POO), which will help them to manage the staff better, take quick and right decisions and achieve goals with the help of flawless operations.
A project oriented organization is basically defined according to its management of projects which is actually the organization strategy. The operational strategy must be developed in such a manner that every activity within the organization and each process must operate as a project and that is how every process will basically be a specific project portfolio in order to achieve a specific outcome. The organization structure also needs to be changed in order to ensure a healthy project management culture and therefore the first step is an organizational differentiation where each activity of the company will be featured at the project and the management responsibility would be adequately decentralized. Every aspect of the company i.e. product development, quality, marketing etc. will be carried out as a project and will have short-term and long-term goals which may vary from three months to 12 months.
The primary goal setting of the company will be based on ‘ programme’, which is basically a set of various projects that are together expected to be accomplished within a period of 12 to 36 months. The organisation structure of NC will be changed as a project oriented organisation and therefore the hierarchy will depend upon the projects which are running within the organisation and will change according to the resource allocation to different projects. In order to run successfully as project oriented organisation, it is also very important to ensure that there is a regular auditing process that checks the performance of the project according to the expectations and the timelines.
NC will work according to work break down structure and the roles and responsibilities of a project-based organization will be very clearly defined. It is important to understand that in a project oriented organization every activity is defined under the responsible resource. Let's consider an activity X which will be a primary responsibility of a resource, and will be a secondary responsibility of another, there will also be two other parties that must be notified about the activity and an approval should be taken as well. Hence all the above changes suggested and discussed need to be implemented in order to change NC as a project oriented organization.
