Project Management Report

(Assignment 1)

Student Name

Course

Purpose

Date
 Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2

Role of Customer in Project Life Cycle..........................................................................................2

Degree of Uncertainty in Project.....................................................................................................2

Global Project’s Complexity and its Successful Outcomes............................................................3

Biggest Challenges in Organizing and Managing Project Management Office..............................3

Importance of Leadership Style in Project Success.........................................................................4

Importance of Audit in Project Management..................................................................................4

Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................4

References........................................................................................................................................6
 Project Management Report

Introduction
In this assignment, there is a brief discussion on project management in the business field. A
project is a venture to accomplish a major objective through the effective utilization of resources
and a unique set of interrelated tasks. It carries diverse information regarding the role of
customer in project life cycle; its related degree of uncertainty; the complexity of global projects
& their successful outcomes; its biggest challenges; and the importance of leadership style &
audit in successful project management.

Role of Customer in Project Life Cycle

A project customer may be based on inside or outside the organization. In the current era,
maximum software projects are executed especially for those consumers who are inside a firm.
While the outside customers are the real target market of a firm. Most companies focused on
such outside consumers in the operating, marketing and sales activities. For the sustainable
growth of a company, loyal customers played a significant role like they provide funds that
directly helped to accomplish the projects. Both inner and outer customers motivate a company's
management to take some risk on their behalf and earn a large amount of profit. The project life
cycle is based on four phases like 1) initiation, 2) planning, 3) performing, and 4) closing. In all
these phases, a manager needs to consider the preferences of both inner and outer customers in
order to accomplish the sustainable beneficial outcomes.
In a current highly competitive market, it is also essential for a project manager to satisfy such
target audience otherwise their project can never become successful, and the organization will
never receive any follow-on business. That's why companies focused on developing their
operations-focused analytical reports on an annual basis.

Degree of Uncertainty in Project

A project management process is mostly dependent on assumptions and estimations before
making any decision that majorly caused uncertainty. Mostly the uncertainty factor occurred in
different ways like incomplete understanding of scope, imperfect understanding of known task,
inefficient understanding of work per scope, and incompatibility to forecast the unexpected
events, etc. There are different aspects that involved in uncertainty i.e. capacity and availability
of resources, actual costs, and how long the tasks will take in its accomplishment [ CITATION
Kev211 \l 1033 ]. So, a project manager majorly focused on taking a proactive approach to resolve
such uncertainty issues in their planning and decisions phases.

Global Project’s Complexity and its Successful Outcomes

Globalization directly adds complexity to project management activities. Because there are many
external factors like unstable environment, economic fluctuation, demographic factors,
workplace diversity, socio-cultural barriers, and the related ones that directly increased the risk
factor and affect the success factor. All these factors made the international project more
complicated and heterogeneous, as compared to the same country project. Being a project
manager, he must have to be aware of the currency exchange rates, joint ventures and
partnerships, political relations, country laws, and availability of high-demand workforce skills.
Sometimes, it becomes quite challenging for a manager to maintain the performance efficiency
of a large project as compared to the small one. So, in order to overcome this challenging
situation, there is a need to add some competencies i.e. cultural awareness, foreign language
skills and communication skills in the project management activities. All these elements directly
helped to make a successful outcome of a global project in this digital world. According to
[CITATION Pro \l 1033 ], such a complexity factor caused negative influence on the overall project
management process especially the project performance. Because lack of agreement on project
complexity results in the delay of activities and errors in project management.

Biggest Challenges in Organizing and Managing Project Management Office

There are many challenges that have been faced in the proper organizing and managing of
project management office, but the major ones are related to poor resource management,
inability to identify gaps and slow adoption of processes. In the poor resource management,
many issues have been derived in the form of inconsistent deployment of resources, inability to
evaluate the return on investment (ROI), unrealistic schedules and budgets, abysmal planning,
scope creep, and lack of time management [ CITATION Kri21 \l 1033 ]. Such issues can be resolved
through a planned timetable, proper coordination, enhancement in software adoption, efficient
management of employees, and effective portfolio reporting capabilities. While the second major
one is the lack of proper ability to find gaps within the existing process because of improper
capability and skills of the workforce. In order to resolve this issue, the Digital Adoption
Platform can be implemented to find the current process’s efficiency and explore its gap. Last,
but not the least, challenge is the slow adoption of processes which can be minimized through
making a simple process.

Importance of Leadership Style in Project Success

The leadership style also played a significant role in the proper execution of a project. Leading a
project towards success requires a person to have clarity in reason, clear vision, practical in
scheduling, and the ability to attract an efficient and talented team. The leadership style should
be innovative, flexible and sharing to make a project successful. A leader should be quite
efficient to emphasize motivation and team building so that diverse individual can perform their
work as a team [ CITATION Rad20 \l 1033 ]. If a manager majorly focuses on objectives & goals,
autocratic in nature, follow a trend, and carried risk avoidance motto, then it will be quite helpful
to develop a successful project. Most projects carried largely and distributed project teams that
are based on diverse individuals; so in order to manage such a complex team, there is a need to
develop a democratic type of leadership style in the successful project management activities.

Importance of Audit in Project Management

A project management audit is a formal review that gains to inspect a given project based on
specific criteria, related to project performance, quality and adherence to the work statement.
Such kind of project audit is essential to make a clear outset. From a macro level performance of
a project, such audit helped to ensure the project management standards that are efficiently
fulfilled. Also, regular accountability helped to make everything transparent and improve the
project performance. In addition to examining a statement of work, such an audit also helped to
explore the overall value of project as ROI. Risk management-based initiative also helped to
make an accurate audit of project. It helps to develop a project plan complying with industry-
specific guidelines and regulations [ CITATION Jer20 \l 1033 ].

Conclusion
Thus, it becomes concluded that both internal and external customers are essential in a project
life cycle, and it’s a major responsibility of project management to consider them in their
initiation, planning, performing, and closing phases. The major aspects of uncertainty are based
on capacity and availability of resources, actual costs, and how long the tasks will take in its
accomplishment. Mostly, it becomes tricky for a project manager to maintain the performance
efficiency of global project under the influence of external factors. While, the biggest challenges
for PMO are related to poor resource management, inability to identify gaps, and slow adoption
of processes. To resolve all such performance issues and develop constructive outcomes, there is
a need for flexible and democratic style-based leadership. Also, audits played a significant role in
efficient project management.
 References
Abdou, S. M., Yong, K., & Othman, M. (2016). Project complexity influence on project
management performance–The Malaysian perspective. In MATEC Web of Conferences
(Vol. 66, p. 00065). EDP Sciences.

Chittoor, R. (2020). Importance of Leadership for Project Success. Retrieved from Project-
Management.com: https://project-management.com/importance-of-leadership-for-
project-success/

Kaushik, K. (2021, 2 12). How PMO Can Overcome Challenges in an Enterprise? Retrieved
from Apty: https://www.apty.io/blog/how-pmo-can-overcome-challenges-in-an-
enterprise
McAbee, J. (2020, 5 7). What is a Project Management Audit? Retrieved from Wrike.com:
https://www.wrike.com/blog/what-is-project-management-audit/

Thompson, K. (2021). How Uncertainty Works. Retrieved from Cprime, Inc:

https://www.cprime.com/resources/blog/how-uncertainty-works-by-kevin-thompson-phd-
pmp-csp/