Evaluating the Roles of Project Managers in Directing Team Work
The positioning of a project manager often defines the measure of a team’s effectiveness. Thus, a successful manager occupies an important role in the accomplishment of high-quality projects and business deals. The performance of the project manager’s role requires adopting a huge variety of constructive features and personal responsibilities. Mainly, a director of a project, normally, executes the roles of a planner, an initiator, an executor, and a controller. Consequently, the embracement of the position requires not only an individual leadership character but extensive training as well.
The essential responsibilities of the project manager concern time and cost coordination, task completion, and goal establishment. Thus, primarily, a director of a successful project is supposed to accomplish planning works, which relate to defining the scopes of individual and group tasks as well as predicting the possible outcomes of the operational processes. Secondly, a project manager executes the role of cost regulation.
Since the realization of the majority of projections relies on the efficient assessment of finance management, the director is responsible for drawing the total budget for the project as well as estimating costs, which have to be directed to specific operations. Furthermore, the manager of a project is supposed to be a successful predictor of possible challenges and difficulties, which could hamper project functioning. Moreover, a successful director is supposed to address problematic zones and issues before they hinder the quality of projection realization (El-Sabaa 2001). Nevertheless, though project management is an individual occupational sphere, even an experienced director requires constant external supervision and approval from the side of the senior management.
The core of effective project management stems from the nature of temporary production. Thus, project work is usually performed in a limited period and may differ from the other projects in terms of the workers, who are involved, the tasks’ character, and the models of performing certain operations. That is why, every project manager has to possess a special talent for establishing a strong rapport with diverse individuals, throughout the work. According to the scientific investigations of the temporary projects, the biggest challenge of projection activities concerns a human factor. Specifically, a frequent change of work tasks embraces constant reorganizations of human resources, who take up the projects.
The stability of team communities helps the employees to feel confident in their roles. In contrast to it, the alterations of team groups create pressures and misunderstandings (Turner & Muller 2003). Consequently, a gifted project manager is responsible for creating the work environment, which excludes the threats of contact tension. The task may be accomplished in several steps. Primarily, a director of a specific project is supposed to take an active part in the selection of team members. Mainly, if a work projection requires performing work tasks individually, it is beneficial for a project manager to gather a group of professionals, who reveal maximal working potentials in individual work. On the opposite, if the task needs extensive collaboration and joint performance, a manager is supposed to find flexible and open-minded workers, who can easily accommodate any human environment and feel strong in the roles of team workers. Conclusively, the positioning of an efficient project manager requires a combination of specific individual features, which might be helpful not only in the course of task coordination but human communication as well.
Project Management as Integration of Theoretical Knowledge and Experience
In this work, it is argued that the fundament of a leading project organization is a combination of theoretical excellence and practical exercising of successful communication skills. The foundation of theoretical project management involves several critical elements. First, it is argued that contemporary project organization embraces technological proficiency. Mainly, according to high-tech improvement, a project manager is required to adopt efficient integrative thinking to relate the essential work tasks to information technology development.
The world of virtual opportunities offers a range of optimal economic solutions, which could enhance the quality of sustaining project operations. Furthermore, information technologies serve as quick tools for exchanging data throughout web spaces (Knoepfel 2002). Secondly, the theoretical excellence of project coordination involves the traditional knowledge of handling organizational tasks, which belong to project constructions. Mainly, a project manager is supposed to be well-educated and knowledgeable of budget handling, task prioritization, the assignation of specific operations to the workers, and promoting the results of the executed structures.
Finally, the adoption of some additional disciplinary subjects might help treat project supervision. For example, the theoretical knowledge of human psychology, as well as the foundations of recruitment management, might help the directors of projects in the process of employee selection. Recently, a special discipline, which majors in the investigation of project supervision, was developed. The subject is called the theoretical field of project management (PM), and it aims at the evaluation of handling complex work organizations from the theory perspective. Although masttheoreticaltheoretical principles of management is a critical part of directing the projects, the discipline outlines three essential drawbacks of the isolated theory use.
Firstly, the subject is quite generalized and assigns standardized patterns of tasks’ accomplishment. Therefore, theory excludes creativity and hinders projection progress. Secondly, the investigation of the field lacks empirical research, which hampers high-quality verification of the methods. Finally, the projects, which are performed in theory, are usually seen as tools (Packendorff 2005).
The knowledge of theoretical principles of project supervision might be implemented with great success if it is coupled with excellent practical proficiency. Mainly, the establishment of real-life contacts between the directors and project teams, as well as realizing communication strategies, stimulates tasks’ performance (Liberatore & Titus 2003). The regular implementation of projects requires handling regular instructions for the workers to control the efficiency of the performed operations. Moreover, the verification of the implemented projects and preventing risks implies the use of practical contact with the employees as well. Conclusively, the integration of theoretical and practical management skills develops a strong foundation for the realization of projects.
DiSC Assessment as the Tool for Measuring Project Employees’ Skills
The effective measurement of project management efficiency is offered by the employment of individual DiSC evaluations in large and small working teams (DiSC Overview 2015). The success of DiSC use may be revealed by the results of the practical assessment of the project group’s work. Thus, the adoption of the methodology in the latest management organization showed the following results: the employees, who are involved in projects, rely on three systems of relations. Mainly, the members of project groups correlate their success with the organization of project management, the reliance on system instructions, and personal suitability. Consequently, it is critical to incorporate DiSC assessments in the functioning of project teams to improve the quality of work commitment.
Reference List
Disc overview. 2015. Web.
El-Sabaa, S. 2001. ‘The skills and career path of an effective project manager’, International Journal of Project Management, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 1-7.
Knoepfel, H. 2002. ‘Theory and practice of project management in construction’, International Journal of Project Management, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 243-252.
Liberatore, M & Titus, G. 2003. ‘The practice of management science in R&D project management’, Management Science, vol. 29, no. 8, pp. 962-974.
Packendorff, J. 2005. ‘Inquiring into the temporary organization: New directions for project management research’, Scandinavian Journal of Management, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 319-333.
Turner, J & Muller, R. 2003. ‘On the nature of the project as a temporary organization’, International Journal of Project Management, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 1-8.