Project Management Mid-Term Study Guide

Strategic management is the art, science and craft of formulating, implementing and evaluating cross-functional decisions that will enable an organization to achieve its long-term objectives. It is the process of specifying the organization's mission, vision and objectives, developing policies and plans, often in terms of projects and programs, which are designed to achieve these objectives and then allocating resources to implement the policies, and plans, projects and programs.

A project may be a part of a city or county public works department and may include all members of the community as stakeholders and number in the thousands. In determining what a stake holder is, it is important that we consider anyone who may fall into any of these categories. As we move on toward stakeholder identification we must analyze the project landscape and determine what individuals or groups can influence and affect the project or be affected by its performance and outcome. (Piscopo, M.)

With this perception, the managers at the construction firm perceived the initiative as a costly one, which would not generate immediate benefits, but would increase costs and operational times. Then, aside from the resistance of managers, reticence to change was also observed at the level of the staff members. These had gotten accustomed to the way things were within the firm and were not willing to sacrifice the safety of their job by introducing new and uncertain variables.

Having a general understanding of each organizational structure will equip the company with the knowledge to make an informed decision of which structure is best for their company. We identified the three structures as being functional, pure project and matrix. The functional structure is more geared towards large organizations that are typically trying to improve a system or procedure. The pure project structure is the opposite of functional and may be a little more costly then the other organizational break downs. The matrix structure best suits construction projects due to its high level of flexibility and adaptability. Knowing this information will give an organization direction in regards to which structure will best fit them.

As you identify your stakeholders there is realisation that some of these may have the power to block or advance, some may be interested in the project and some may not care about it.

Stakeholders can be considered as the foundation, strategic assets and drivers of a project 's success or failure. Stakeholders ' influential characteristics, understanding, and their effective utilization and management are critical to project success (Mahmoud, Govindan, & Wan, 2015)

Stakeholder management is not without challenges. Effective management of stakeholders faces a number of difficulties as identified by the participants to the study despite the standards and available frameworks for managing and engaging with stakeholders. In an ideal world, these standards would work perfectly without any flaws but the world is not ideal at least the project management world.

organized in relation to the organization of the parent firm. Recently, many firms have adopted the “enterprise project management” form of organization. This is in response to the same factors that have caused the rapid growth in the use of projects themselves.

Significant research efforts have been devoted to stakeholder management issues in mega construction projects highlighting difficulties of current practice and weaknesses of traditional stakeholder analysis methods. A structured review of stakeholder management research would therefore provide useful insights in improving current stakeholder analysis methods for application in complex project environment. Through an extensive literature review, four key research areas are identified, namely “stakeholder identification”, “stakeholder concerns”, “stakeholder influences” and

This process is critically important because it will lead to a successful project. Other than that, the process in the project management must be followed by organization and top management to ensure that their project is on the right path.

There are numerous ways in which stakeholders can be defined, and it comes down a project team’s definition of stakeholder that has a large bearing on who will be identified as a stakeholder. Nutt and Beckoff (1992: 439) define stakeholders as ‘All parties who will be affected by or will affect the organization’s strategy’, while Eden and Ackermann (1998:117) define stakeholders as ‘People or small groups with the power to respond to, negotiate with, and change the strategic future of the organization’. Nutt and Beckoff’s definition is very broad while Eden and Ackermann’s definition is more specific; as to be a stakeholder the party must have the power to

The essential processesof project management The process of project definition Part of a project definition checklist A functional matrix for a single project i a n manufacturingcompany Matrix organization for several simultaneous projects in a manufacturingcompany Matrix organization for a company engineering petrochemical, mining or large construction projects Project team organization Project team versus balanced matrix A hybrid organization A project with more than one project manager

This chapter presents results, analyse and discusses the findings that have been deducted from the interview of 7 participants from one of the British contracting organisation. The interviews were done in relation to the research questions that guided the study. This study is set out with the aim of assessing how projects’ stakeholders are practically managed from identification, classification, analysis and engagement strategies. Challenges in managing stakeholders and proposal to minimise the challenges was also investigated. These analysis and discussion will lead to conclusion in the next chapter.

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To start, participants were asked who project stakeholders are before assessing how stakeholders are identified and some probing questions followed to get