Macon Inc free essay sample

In the process of going from a non-project driven firm to a project-driven one, the greatest resistance might come from the executives including the board members, company owners and the vice president. The strong and rigid culture has been instilled in the company since 50 years and as a result, the presidents preaching fell on deaf ears. Authoritative support is necessary to execute such strategies and it seems that for Macon Inc. , that will be the most difficult one. Resistance will also surface among other groups like the line managers and engineers as there is a lack of accountability and cross-functional composition. The arrogant and accusing attitude of engineers towards the production group as well as vice presidents favoritism towards the mechanical department will be uprooted if excellent project management is executed, thereby they will resist the change. 2 What plan should be developed for achieving excellence in Project Management? The following systematic plan should be followed in order to achieve desirable results for project management: a A comprehensive list of current pit holes and improvement areas in Macon Inc. We will write a custom essay sample on Macon Inc or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page has to be compiled. For example a few of them could be: i Project Delays ii Customer Complaints iii Conflict within departments due to documentation iv Project failure due to uncontrolled scope This helps in recognizing the need for project management techniques implementation. a The second step will be to educate and convince the executive management including the board members and vice-president for the need of these techniques. Without executive support and acceptance, excellence in PM is impossible. b Next in line would be the line managers whose acceptance is critical due to changing functional roles leading to shared resources (employees) between line and project management. Without the cooperation of the line managers, employees will suffer from conflicts in dual-reporting standards. c After the acceptance of all stakeholders is achieved, actual growth begins and a project management methodology needs to be selected based on the major areas seeking improvement. A project tracking and monitoring system has to be in place for improved estimation of project life-cycle. d In the last step of maturity, continued training and refining is inevitable for good project management practices. Educational programs should be embedded as a part of employee and executive level training. e Excellence in PM goes beyond the maturity phase, where all the improvement areas have been addressed and the experience from mature PM combined with the deduced KPIs now allows the company to lead projects with a customer-focused approach. 3 How long will it take to achieve some degree of excellence? Implementing an efficient PM system requires some initial investment in developing the methodology and support systems for planning and scheduling. However, these costs will be offset by the additional benefits that it generates in term of efficiency and customer satisfaction. Only at this point, PM can be said to have benefited the company. This stage is called the maturity level where the processes and tools are in place to achieve successes in PM. With immediate support from the executive level, Macon Inc. could take close to 2 years to achieve a maturity phase. Built on the learnings and KPIs from the maturity phase, a degree of excellence follows. If PM practices are continued for each project along with correcting the realizations from each failure, a stage of excellence where there are almost all projects succeed, can take minimum 5 or more years. 4 Explain the potential risks to Macon if the customers experience with project management increases while Macons knowledge remains stagnant. If Macon does not adopt Project Management practices soon while the customers continue doing so, it might actually end up costing them a significant amount of clients, customers and hindering their bottom line. Some of the other implications are as follows: Losing Customers customers switch to those companies who have parallel Project Management processes as their own Decreased Profits Without Project Management, budget management will be poor and often resulting in cost overruns which lead to decreased profits An inability to cope with the Competition Schedule Delays leading to penalty payments or lost contract Inefficient Project Communications: Customers will actively seek one point of contact for all their queries but without Project Management, they may have unclear and changing communication channels