Topic: Hiring New Employees Project Performance This should include a candid ass
ID: 355118 • Letter: T
Question
Topic: Hiring New Employees
Project Performance
This should include a candid assessment of the project's achievements relative to its plan. Did the project achieve the goals you set out to accomplish? It should also include candid criticism as to the project performance. What caused this poor performance? What recommendations do you have to ensure it doesn't happen in future projects?
Administrative Performance
What are the standard administrative practices that occur within an organization that were beneficial to the project? What were some drawbacks that could be improved on?
Organizational Structure
How did the organization's operating structure help or hinder the project team? How could it have been changed to better align the structure with the activities?
Team Performance
How effectively did the team perform this project? Were the proper people picked to perform the project? Were they properly trained? How did the project manager perform? Address team-building techniques and training activities that you think would ensure effective team performance of your project if it actually occurred.
Techniques of Project Management
What organizational methods are effective for project management? These include software, scheduling, rules, procedures, etc.
Benefits to the Organization and the Customer
To what degree did this project provide the benefits and accomplish the goals that it intended? Keep in mind that goals are not always immediate and can occur over time.
Explanation / Answer
Project Performance
Firms want employees that are highly motivated and feel they have a real stake in the company’s success. Such employees are willing to finish tasks in their own time and see a strong link between the firm’s success and their own career prospects. In short, motivated, empowered employees work hand in hand with employers in an atmosphere of mutual trust. Companies with engaged workforces have also reported less absenteeism, more engagement with customers, greater employee satisfaction, fewer mistakes, fewer employees leaving, and naturally higher profits. Such is the power of this concept that former Secretary of State for Business, Peter Mandelson, commissioned David McLeod and Nita Clarke to investigate how much UK competitiveness could be enhanced by the wider use of employee engagement. David and Nita concluded that in a world where work tasks have become increasingly similar, engaged employees could give some companies the edge over their rivals. They also identified significant barriers to engagement such as a lack of appreciation for the concept of employee engagement by some companies and managers. Full participation by line managers is particularly crucial.
From the employee point of view, it is easy to view engagement as a management fad, particularly if the company fails to demonstrate the necessary commitment. Some also feel that in a recession, employee engagement becomes less of a priority when in fact it could be the factor that enables a business in trouble to stay afloat. Others feel that in an environment where recruitment is easier due to increasing unemployment, firms tend to slacken their commitment to engagement. A company that has demonstrated the value of employee engagement is John Lewis, who sell a range of household goods, clothes, and electronics. The John Lewis business model has been hailed as a good way to run public services and 70,000 store employees recently received a slice of a £151.3 million bonus. The engagement strategy of John Lewis is facilitated by its unusual employee-owned structure. Employees are known as partners and the company is run by a Partnership Council, a Partnership Board, and a Chairman. At least 80 percent of the Partnership Council is elected and this is one of the ways employees feel that they can influence the working of the company. At the core of the John, Lewis philosophy is a belief that employees are critical to success. Employees benefit from an environment that positively encourages a healthy work-life balance and engagement in community projects and charity work. Tangible benefits include a noncontributory final salary pension scheme, store discounts, subsidized holidays, and even a contribution towards concert tickets. Tesco is another retailing company that has embraced employee engagement. Chief Executive, Terry Leahy, remarked recently that he knew more about Tesco customers than his employees and set out to improve that situation. One of the most significant factors in this process has been an improved understanding with USDAW, the shop workers union.Tesco also launched two notable engagement projects in 2008, one of which encouraged employees to take part in a talent contest. Vouchers for in-store shopping were also distributed to employees at Christmas.
Performance management systems are one of the major focuses in business today. Although every HR function contributes to performance management, training and performance appraisal plays a more significant role. Whereas performance appraisal occurs at a specific time, performance management is a dynamic, ongoing, continuous process. Every person in the organization is a part of the PM system. Each part of the system, such as training, appraisal, and rewards, is integrated and linked for the purpose of continuous organizational effectiveness. With PM, the effort of each and every worker should be directed toward achieving strategic goals. If a worker’s skills need to be improved, training is needed. With PM systems, training has a direct tie-in to achieving organizational effectiveness. In addition, pay and performance are directly related to achieving organizational goals.
For many organizations, the primary goal of an appraisal system is to improve individual and organizational performance. There may be other goals, however. A potential problem with PA and a possible cause of much dissatisfaction is expecting too much from one appraisal plan. For example, a plan that is effective for developing employees may not be the best for determining pay increases. Yet, a properly designed system can help achieve organizational objectives and enhance employee performance. In fact, PA data are potentially valuable for virtually every human resource functional area.
Administrative Performance
1: Plan the work by utilizing a project definition document
There is a tendency for IT infrastructure projects to shortchange the planning process, with an emphasis on jumping right in and beginning the work. This is a mistake. The time spent properly planning the project will result in reduced cost and duration and increased quality over the life of the project. The project definition is the primary deliverable from the planning process and describes all aspects of the project at a high level. Once approved by the customer and relevant stakeholders, it becomes the basis for the work to be performed. For example, in planning an Exchange migration, the project definition should include the following:
2: Create a planning horizon
After the project definition has been prepared, the workplace can be created. The work plan provides the step-by-step instructions for constructing project deliverables and managing the project. You should use a prior workplan from a similar project as a model if one exists. If not, build one the old-fashioned way by utilizing a work-breakdown structure and network diagram.
3: Define project management procedures up front
The project management procedures outline the resources that will be used to manage the project. This will include sections on how the team will manage issues, scope change, risk, quality, communication, and so on. It is important to be able to manage the project rigorously and proactively and to ensure that the project team and all stakeholders have a common understanding of how the project will be managed. If common procedures have already been established for your organization, utilize them on your project.
4: Manage the work plan and monitor the schedule and budget
Once the project has been planned sufficiently, execution of the work can begin. In theory, since you already have agreement on your project definition and since your work plan and project management procedures are in place, the only challenge is to execute your plans and processes correctly. Of course, no project ever proceeds entirely as it was estimated and planned. The challenge is having the rigor and discipline needed to apply your project management skills correctly and proactively.
5: Look for warning signs
Look for signs that the project may be in trouble. These could include the following:
If these situations occur, raise visibility through risk management, and put together a plan to proactively ensure that the project stays on track. If you cannot successfully manage the problems, raise an issue.
Create a detailed work plan, including assigning resources and estimating the work as far out as you feel comfortable. This is your planning horizon. Past the planning horizon, lay out the project at a higher level, reflecting the increased level of uncertainty. The planning horizon will move forward as the project progresses. High-level activities that were initially vague need to be defined in more detail as their timeframe gets closer.
6: Ensure that the sponsor approves scope-change requests
After the basics of managing the schedule, managing scope is the most important activity required to control a project. Many project failures are not caused by problems with estimating or team skill sets but by the project team working on major and minor deliverables that were not part of the original project definition or business requirements. Even if you have good scope-management procedures in place, there are still two major areas of scope-change management that must be understood to be successful: understanding who the customer is and scope creep.
In general, the project sponsor is the person funding the project. For infrastructure projects like an Exchange migration, the sponsor might be the CIO or CFO. Although there is usually just one sponsor, a big project can have many stakeholders or people who are impacted by the project. Requests for scope changes will most often come from stakeholders — many of whom may be managers in their own right. One manager might want chat services for his or her area. Another might want an exception to the size limits you have placed on mailboxes. It doesn't matter how important a change is to a stakeholder, they can't make scope-change decisions, and they can't give your team the approval to make the change. In proper scope-change management, the sponsor (or a designate) must give the approval, since they are the only ones who can add funding to cover the changes and know if the project impact is acceptable.
7: Guard against scope creep
Most project managers know to invoke scope-change management procedures if they are asked to add a major new function or a major new deliverable to their project. However, sometimes the project manager doesn't recognize the small scope changes that get added over time. Scope creep is a term used to define a series of small scope changes that are made to the project without scope-change management procedures being used. With scope creep, a series of small changes — none of which appear to affect the project individually — can accumulate and have a significant overall impact on the project. Many projects fail because of scope creep, and the project manager needs to be diligent in guarding against it.
8: Identify risks up front
When the planning work is occurring, the project team should identify all known risks. For each risk, they should also determine the probability that the risk event will occur and the potential impact on the project. Those events identified as high-risk should have specific plans put in place to mitigate them so they do not, in fact, occur. Medium risks should be evaluated to see whether they need to be proactively managed. (Low-level risks may be identified as assumptions. That is, there is potential risk involved, but you are "assuming" that the positive outcome is much more probable.) Some risks are inherent in a complex project that affects every person in the company. Other risks may include not having the right level of expertise, unfamiliarity with the technology, and problems integrating smoothly with existing products or equipment.
9: Continue to assess potential risks throughout the project
Once the project begins, periodically perform an updated risk assessment to determine whether other risks have surfaced that need to be managed.
10: Resolve issues as quickly as possible
Issues are big problems. For instance, in an Exchange migration, the Exchange servers you ordered aren't ready and configured on time. Or perhaps the Windows forest isn't set up correctly and needs to be redesigned. The project manager should manage open issues diligently to ensure that they are being resolved. If there is no urgency to resolve the issue or if the issue has been active for some time, it may not really be an issue. It may be a potential problem (risk), or it may be an action item that needs to be resolved at some later point. Real issues, by their nature, must be resolved with a sense of urgency.
Organizational Structure
Organizational structure refers to the way that an organization arranges people and jobs so that its work can be performed and its goals can be met. When a workgroup is very small, and face-to-face communication is frequent, a formal structure may be unnecessary, but in a larger organization decision have to be made about the delegation of various tasks. Thus, procedures are established that assign responsibilities for various functions. It is these decisions that determine the organizational structure. In an organization of any size or complexity, employees' responsibilities typically are defined by what they do, who they report to, and for managers, who report to them. Over time these definitions are assigned to positions in the organization rather than to specific individuals. The relationships among these positions are illustrated graphically in an organizational chart. The best organizational structure for any organization depends on many factors including the work it does; its size in terms of employees, revenue, and the geographic dispersion of its facilities; and the range of its businesses (the degree to which it is diversified across markets). An organization's structure is a daunting managerial task, and the immensity of such a project is at least partly responsible for why organizational structures change infrequently. Job specialization, a hierarchical reporting structure through a tightly-knit chain-of-command, and the subordination of individual interests to the superordinate goals of the organization combined to result in organizations arranged by functional departments with order and discipline maintained by rules, regulations, and standard operating procedures. This classical view, or bureaucratic structure, of organizations, was the dominant pattern.
Team Performance
Identifying Training Needs
The hardest part of developing your team can be knowing where to begin. Start by understanding your team members' developmental needs. Review and update their job descriptions, talk to them, and watch them work. Often, just asking the right questions can reveal knowledge and skill gaps in your team. For example, what is the key part of a person's role? And what is your team's most urgent performance issue?
This is particularly helpful if your workplace doesn't have a culture of performance management, that is a system of regularly appraising and improving people's performance. If your team members are not used to having their performance appraised and developed in this way, they may view it as a negative judgment of their competency. Gathering specific information about what they need to be successful in their roles will help them to feel positive about developing themselves.
You can use a Training Needs Assessment to help you to identify who needs to develop their skills, and what kind of training is right for them. This will allow you to select training in a targeted way for the people who really need it. After all, Excel training for one team member who is having trouble with spreadsheets may be a waste of time for other team members with different needs.
Choosing the Right Training Methods
Now that you've identified areas where your people can improve, you can choose training to suit their needs. However, finding the right balance between different ways of learning that will suit everyone can be a challenge.
The 70:20:10 model, for example, suggests that 70 percent of learning happens through experience, such as daily tasks; 20 percent through conversations with other people, such as coaching; and 10 percent through traditional training courses. Here, you need to give people the opportunity to use the skills they need to develop, discuss them with more experienced practitioners, and then train appropriately.Some of the more common ways to improve people's skills include On-the-Job Training, where someone works alongside a more experienced colleague; Instructor-Led Training, where whole groups can be taught in a classroom; and Active Training, which uses games and role-playing to keep learners engaged.
Coaching
It's worth bearing in mind that many performance gaps should be closed with better communication rather than with a training program. You can coach your team members by having confidential and relaxed one-on-one conversations with them. Having these conversations regularly will help you to identify and deal with a range of issues effectively, from helping people achieve their goals to addressing performance problems.
Specific coaching models, such as GROW, allow you to do this. GROW stands for Goal, Reality, Options, and Will, and creates a structure for your discussion. The POSITIVE model can help people to find purpose in their work, while the PRACTICE model focuses on finding solutions to problems.
You should also ensure that you give your people plenty of feedback as a matter of routine.
Team Building Activities
Team building exercises can be fun and effective ways to improve teamwork and identify people's strengths and weaknesses. If you decide to run one, you should select the exercise very carefully, so that it meets your training objective.
It's important to identify your team's biggest challenges before you choose an exercise. By doing this, you can ensure that the event is more than just a nice day out of the office. For example, if you have noticed that poor communication has led to your team making mistakes or missing deadlines, you may want to select exercises that improve essential communication skills like listening, empathy and verbalization.
Some team building activities encourage creativity and develop leadership, while others strengthen problem-solving abilities and build your team's planning and strategy skills.
Delegating Work
Effective delegation can also strengthen your team. You may feel nervous about handing over responsibility for your projects and tasks to someone else, but you don't have time to do everything yourself, and your team members need opportunities to learn new skills and gain experience.
When you delegate, you will need to manage the process carefully to achieve the best outcome for your people. Hand over a task carefully and help the team member who takes it on to succeed, by giving him or her support and guidance to complete it. Otherwise, your team members may not want to take on other tasks in the future.
When you delegate successfully, you can focus on adding value to your own work. Taking on a new challenge will improve your people's confidence and give them a great sense of empowerment.
Succession Planning
Once you have identified your team members' abilities and performance levels, you can put plans in place so that you don't lose vital skills and knowledge if any of them decide to move on. Good succession planning ensures that individuals pass on their skills, experience, and knowledge to their colleagues well before they leave. Being prepared and managing these transitions will help you to deal with the change more easily.
If you have people on your team with roles so essential that even a day's illness would throw everything into chaos, it may be advisable to cross-train your team members in one another's responsibilities.
Techniques of Project Management
Nearly every activity within an organization could be labeled as a project possessing unique characteristics and varying levels of importance to the organization. A project is defined as a planned undertaking of related activities to reach an objective that has a beginning and an end. All projects solve some type of problem, but projects may also be established simply to determine and define feasible alternative solutions to problems. Seven primary characteristics of a project include:
In the past, a company typically decided to undertake a project effort, assigned the project and the "necessary" resources to a carefully selected individual and assumed they were using some form of project management. Organizational implications were of little importance. Although the basic concepts of project management are simple, applying these concepts to an existing organization is not. Richard P. Olsen, in his article "Can Project Management Be Defined?" defined project management as "…the application of a collection of tools and techniques…to direct the use of diverse resources toward the accomplishment of a unique, complex, one-time task within time, cost, and quality constraints. Each task requires a particular mix of these tools and techniques structured to fit the task environment and lifecycle (from conception to completion) of the task."
Employing project management technologies minimizes the disruption of routine business activities in many cases by placing under a single command all of the skills, technologies, and resources needed to realize the project. The skills required depending on each specific project and the resources available at that time. The greater the amount of adjustments a parent organization must make to fulfill project objectives, the greater chance exists for project failure. The form of project management will be unique for every project endeavor and will change throughout the project.
The project management process typically includes four key phases: initiating the project, planning the project, executing the project, and closing the project. An outline of each phase is provided below.
Initiating the Project
The project management techniques related to the project initiation phase include:
Planning the Project
The project management techniques related to the project planning phase include:
Setting a baseline project plan. This should provide an estimate of the project's tasks and resource requirements.