ENGINEERING PROJECT

BRSEN AKIN
140302165
Mechanical Engineering

1. What are the reasons the author advances for project management to be considered an
accidental profession? The twelve guidelines are presented in no particular order.
Order them by level of importance and explain yur reasoning.
a- Understand the context of project management:
b- Above all, plan, plan and plan
c- Lead from the front
d- Build and maintain a cohesive team
e- One look forward is worth two looks back
f- Understand who the stakeholders are and what they want
g- Accept the political nature of the organization
h- Enthusiasm and despair are both infectious
i- Recognize project team conflicts
j- Understand what success means
k- Use time carefully or it will use you
l- Remember what are you trying to do
The order I have given to it is:
1. Understand the context of project management:
Its very much important to understand the projects challenges by the project manager
and team. Its the unique form of organizational work.
2. Above all, plan, plan and plan:
The reason for putting it at first is because planning is the efficient project
management to do it timely. It includes the budget, teams efficiency, and project
specifications. Without a proper plan many projects can be left incomplete after
wasting money and many resources on them.
3. Lead from the front:
Project manager is the one with abilities to be a future leader. He should give the
directions with strong and effective way to succeed in a project even by facing and
solving the problems or conflicts.

4. Build and maintain a cohesive team:

According to the plan, the project manager has to build the efficient team as when a
team is selected for project development and its implementation; the healthier the
relationship/atmosphere of the team, the greater is the chance the team will work
effectively.
5. One look forward is worth two looks back:
It is important to keep planning on step by step basis. The question what if should be
gets answered by the project manager. That what if it couldnt be completed on time,
what if increase in high cost at the execution level would decrease the influence of the
stakeholders.
6. Understand who the stakeholders are and what they want:
Many conflicts arise by the stakeholders in understanding them and their agendas so
the project manager in the beginning should assess their agendas and try to solve them.
7. Accept the political nature of the organization:
For every novice manager to understand the nature of the organization must be
difficult. So it should be understood early to maintain the project managers positions
within the firm. Many important decisions related to resources are made on bargaining
power and deal making so it would only be successful if the project manager
understands the nature of the firm for the future advantage.
8. Enthusiasm and despair are both infectious:
The project leader should be enthusiastic for his work and his attitude will show the
success of the project. The team would take a cue from the mangers attitude of
making the project successful.
9. Recognize project team conflicts:
The best project manager is the one who can recognize the conflict among teams at the
early stage to resolve it on time so that to maintain the healthy environment within the
team.
10. Understand what success means:
This means we will be successful after having an effective plan but with that the most
important criteria includes client use and customer satisfactions. So the project should
be managed in order to provide satisfaction which is directly proportional to the
organizations success.

11. Use time carefully or it will use you:

The time of completion of the project is very much important. The project manager
should have the ability to utilize resources on time as rest many of the projects are
pending in line.
12. Remember what are you trying to do:
The project manager has to keep in mind the purpose of the project and also the end
result.
2.

Where would you place yourself in Figure 2?

Characteristics

Naive

Sensible

Sharks

Underlying Attitude

Politics is unpleasant

Politics is necessary

Politics is an opportunity

Intent

Avoid at all costs

Further departmental goals

Self-serving and predatory

Techniques

Tell it like it is

Manipulate; use fraud and

deceit when necessary

Favorite Tactics

Nonethe truth will

win out

Network; expand connections;

use system to give and receive
favors
Negotiate, bargain

Bully; misuse information;

cultivate and use friends
and other contacts

We would place our self in sensible political actors because we understand the fact that
politics is necessary for achieving goals through negotiation and bargaining. Another thing is
that staying out of politics is not the same as standing the middle ground and being mature,
but rather being naive. And the alternative to being naive is not necessarily becoming a
shark. Hence the real middle ground is becoming sensible is to accept , the fact that politics
is inseparable from any organization, and is therefore a necessary means for achieving goals
through bargaining and negotiations. This is true for any member of organization, but to
Project Managers in particular because they are commonly known to have high level of
responsibility without appropriate level of authority and they are the people of influence so
they need to not only the situation at hand, but also the people that are involved in order to
determine what buttons to push to successfully be able to influence the situation in a favorable
direction to themselves and the project. Sensible political actors makes alliances with power
members of other stake holder departments, networking, negotiating mutually acceptable
solutions to seemingly insoluble problems and recognizing the importance of the act of give
and take in organizational context.
3. A few of the guidelines are related to the need to understand the reason for the project
in the first place. Which guidelines would you place in this category? Why is this so
crucial?

Remember what you are trying to do

The manager should always give first priority to the mission of the project; he needs to keep it
forefront to himself as well as he team. It is so important to him because throughout the
project right from the start to the termination point it will help him focusing on the purpose of
the project. It will also give him and the team a motivation towards the success of project.
Losing the mission from mind will detract the entire project which can result into direct
failures hence it is very crucial to project manager.
Plan, Plan and Plan
The saying that those who fail to plan are planning to fail hold true in this case. Planning is
the core component of every project success. It is the initial planning phase in which project
manager sets the reason, objective or the purpose of the project. It is very important in
deciding the success or failure rate of project. Only detailed, specific and realistic planning
can leads to clear implementation and termination of project otherwise vague planning will
leads to vague specifications and thus implementation.
Understand the context of project management
To understand the reason behind the project it is first important to understand the context of
project management which is operating in a particular organization. Each project is unique to
giving new product or services in a temporary different environment outside the routine
organization environment. The project manager needs to align the project strategy with the
overall organizational strategy and goal in order to meet success of the project.
4. Why, in lesson 9, is always thinking about what if so important?
The approach what if can be considered same as an approach for continuous improvement.
It is important to have a what if approach because being satisfied with the current levels of
performance may lead to overoptimistic estimates. If the project team maintains the
continuous improvement approach this allows them to critically analyze the system, and
unearth problems that arent apparent. This approach also enables the team to devise
contingency plans and save themselves from costs of over budgeting, time wastage and
performance loss. Critical thinking usually also leads to more cost effective and creative
solutions. This approach also means that the project team has the opportunity to check and
balance the real estimates versus the planned ones at the time they occur, otherwise
corrections after the loss has been incurred commence. The constant drill of critically
analyzing all parts of the decisions and actions sound hectic but it gives the whole project
stability and support. If the project has been continuously analyzed for improvements, this
gives the members enough room to be creative and take risks, since they already have back up
plans at their disposal. Some projects are subject to dynamic environment, and the future
trends cannot be precisely predicted. The What if approach serves as a safety mechanism in
such environments. It is not very possible indeed to have some control over the future but

through the what if approach, project members identify the backup plans that can be taken,
emergency decisions if future takes certain turns.

5. Lesson 12 warns about not planning enough, but also about spending too much time
planning. How do you draw the line?
Planning is an important stage as the success of the other stages totally depends on it. If the
planning is done efficiently and proper work plans are made out of it then the project manager
can achieve required results. But it the planning is not done properly then issues will be faced
by the project manager and things will have to be redone that will incur a lot of cost and there
is also a chance that project will be a failure. On the other hand if too much time is spend on
this stage then there is a chance that the existing opportunity may not remain when the project
manager is done with the planning. So what project managers should do is that they should
keep a balance that is time they should not spend too much time on this stage and not too less
time. They should be smart enough like the entrepreneurs who can recognize the mistake and
change their strategies accordingly.