Question from Your Fellow Student

Dear Sir,

Would you kindly explain what actually they wanted us to do in this part of the Task 2 question:-

"The analysis should include the skills and competencies required by the Project Manager, along with the project management process. Use examples of the concerns, stages, processes, leadership, administration & control problems associated with managing the lifecycle of this major project."

Thank you.

Answer:

On the skills and competencies required by the Project Manager (PM), remember what I said about the diagram in my Lecture Two, Slide No.7? In the slide, the PM must have the People Skills, Project Management Skills, Technical Skills, Integration Skills and Knowledge of the Organisation he is in.

People Skills refers to the ability of the PM to lead and motivate his/her project team members towards completing the project tasks and achieving the project objectives within the specified time, cost and scope. I have not cover this part with you all yet.

Project Management Skills refers to plan, implement, monitor and control all elements and resources in the project. This is similar to the skills required from a typical manager but within a project environment. If you have worked in a project before, you would appreciate want I mean by 'project environment'. A project environment is always bounded by tight schedule and limited budget, lots of unforseen problems and troubleshooting.

Technical Skills refers more specific set of skills. For example, if it is an IT project; it would be expected for the PM to have a background in IT in order to effectively manage the project. In the context of Task 2, what would you think the technical background of the PM should be?

Integration Skills refers to the ability of the PM to merge or integrate all his/her skills above in order to manage this project effectively. This usually requires the PM to have certain level of experience and maturity to do so.

As for the Knowledge of the Organisation, this is quite basic and straight forward i.e. the PM must know and understand well the organisation that he/she is working for the project. Nevertheless, this brings to the question of whether to appoint the PM internally from the organisation or to employ an external PM. Both has their pros and cos; you should highlight and discuss this in your report.

I have not covered some of the components in my lecture, will do so over the next few lectures. Don't worry too much about it.....

As for the second part, I would suggest you look for case studies in the Internet to get more insight into this part. It'll help you to develop your thoughts and ideas in this direction. As noted in my previous entry, you can go into the Project Management Institute website to look for their case studies. No need to go through all but just the few relevant ones would be enough.

Good luck!