Introduction
The Sodor Petrol Terminal project was undertaken with a team of students as a case study in project management. The purpose of the exercise was to organize and plan the project within a task team, and offer with events arising during the task life, utilizing techniques and tools discovered during the review of project management.
Management of the Job Team
Team Selection
The team selection for the task was remaining to individuals, who had to form themselves into teams based on personal choice and inner acceptance. In an educational setting arbitrary group selection is very common but not genuine as it does not consider the variety of skills on the list of students (Blowers 2003). In conditions of skill pieces the team building in this job was random for the reason that there is no comparison before a team was preferred, merely a selection of friends or acquaintances. This might appear to be negative and, as Blowers (2003) described, totally unrealistic in the business world, where clubs of high skill-set individuals would be chosen to provide a project the highest possible potential for success.
However, the team selection had not been as random as it first looked like, as four members of the team acquired worked alongside one another before, and even though it was not acknowledged formally, were alert to each individual's skills and working methods. This became a confident feature in the project development. There have been an additional two participants of the group who were known only to one of the center four, which also proved to be significant during the course of the job.
Team Development
Tabaka (2006) paraphrasing Tuckman and Jensen (1977) explained that in the 'forming' stage the team members must acquaint themselves with each other and judge their own among others role in the team. This stage was already completed in the team which created for the Sodor task. Four out of six members had already worked with each other in previous projects and understood each others' features. Both 'extra' people were unknown, did not turn up first, and exhibited no excitement for participating in the project jobs. They were therefore largely disregarded in conditions of anticipations of the other associates.
The second level according to Tuckman and Jensen is 'storming' where associates try to exert electricity over each other, and jockey for position within the group. This level was also already completed within the main team in the beginning of the job, and the team acquired already surpassed Tuckman and Jensen's 'norming' level, with the trust having been developed in past team encounters, and the ability to work together successfully having already been achieved. The team was therefore ready for Tuckman and Jensens's 'carrying out' stage. Unfortunately the two 'outsiders' to the team never achieved a real way of measuring trust within the team, so they remained 'outsiders' for all of those other project, but were permitted to contribute in a little way whenever they portrayed a desire.
Team Task Management
In the initial stages of the Sodor job tasks, almost all of the project team was missing for the conferences. This would appear to be a very unlucky and negative feature for the development of the project. Ericksen and Dyer (2004) taken care of that almost all of the successful project teams they had studied had experienced a very decisive kick off, with solid task management, path and clarification right at the start, as opposed to the groups who possessed procrastinated and lacked way.
As there was no-one else to use the position, the one team member present in the initial levels of the Sodor project took on the responsibility of project supervisor, at least for your stage of the project. The team member experienced to act alone at the start of the project and could be decisive and work with direction exactly because there is no-one else to interfere, no discussions to be performed, and the project was able to progress. As the team had been 'normed' it was able to transfer to the 'doing' stage. The result of the other team members was agreement that the team member got shown the responsibility to take on the task. There is also an main knowing that the other team members would agree to future tasks. This understanding was developed into a casual agreement of work within the team, more out of conformance to the task rules than from the necessity within the team.
Throughout the course of all of those other job the other team members fulfilled their tasks as have been agreed in the agreement of works. It had been decided that the regions of relevance within the task would each have a person largely in charge of that particular area. The regions of relevance chosen were planning, charging, procurements, and construction or change management. The four center users of the group accepted responsibility for a location each with little assessment between users, with the two 'outdoor' members agreeing to assist whenever needed. This apparently discrete allocation of jobs is a negative feature in some teams but was suited to the character of the associates, all being highly motivated and goal oriented individuals, but also having a higher level of trust in their other team members to deliver. There is an aspect of informal skills dimension in the allocation of the tasks, done over a strictly experiential basis rather than empirical evidence.
Tenenberg (2008) questioned whether people who are highly individual can be urged into more collaborative behaviour to make teamwork more effective. He quoted Cain et al. (1996) and explained that software development should be thought to be essentially communal and that the cultural side of the activity needs to be attended to - the same process could be applied to any projects that happen to be team-based. Tenenberg (2008) stated that teams have in common a set of 'collective action problems' which require teamwork to be resolved. One particular problems mentioned is that of dealing with people who do not donate to the teams attempts. The Sodor task team didn't address this problem at all, typically because the team functioned as co-operative individuals rather than team, and the ones who did not co-operate were simply overlooked and their potential workload absorbed by the co-operating members.
Akgun et al. (2007) also postulated team techniques in an effort to improve the likelihood of a assignments success, and submit the thought of 'group strength' - a notion held by team members that they can be effective. However the Sodor team worked well mainly as individuals there is a genuine trust among the main members and an authentic opinion in the 'strength' factor - which might have been mistaken.
Summary
The team did not behave as a traditional team with a high level of relationship and decision making but rather as a couple of co-operating individuals. It performed, however, feel the traditional Tuckman and Jensen (1977) stages of development, albeit before the Sodor project begun, and also displayed some of the characteristics of any team as defined by Katzenbach and Smith (1993) - complementary associates with common goals and approaches who were eager to be presented accountable to the other team members.
Evaluation of the Project
General frameworks of task management are available from many options. Gannon (1994) recommended that project management should contain six functions - 'planning, arranging, executing, monitoring, reporting and handling. ' Prodomos and Macaulay (1996) proposed four main activities - 'planning, monitoring, co-ordinating, and reviewing'. The Sodor project will be evaluated using the categories of planning, and monitoring and control.
The Gantt charts and cost schedules from this section are available in the Appendix attached.
Planning the Project
Prodomos and Macaulay (1996) cited Jordan and Machesky (1990) and proposed that the look stage was the foundation for the other job activities. Dvir et al. (2003) reported a belief amongst project management specialists (recognized by the Job Management Institute's Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge - hereinafter referred to as the PMBOK) is the fact that planning is an essential activity which cannot guarantee success, but without which a project will most definitely fail. This idea was reflected in the Sodor research study where 1 / 2 of the activities were on planning the task.
Activity Planning
Initially, the Sodor project was shown as a textual case study, providing information to construct a work malfunction framework. Andersen (1996) argued that in a real situation activity planning cannot be completed when it's most readily useful, i. e. in the beginning of the project, because every one of the activities can't be known then. The Sodor project's activities were recognized and provided, so a work break down framework could be constructed by the task head. Other categorizations of the task and various breakdowns were possible but the task team was pleased with the project manager's decisions.
Project Planning
Hughes (1995) recommended a 'Step Good' guide for software jobs with details of the stages a task planning team must complete to achieve an effective task plan. PRINCE2 - a methodology advocated and required by the united kingdom federal government also prescribes levels of job development including planning, which displays the PMBOK regions of Opportunity, Time and Cost Management. (Siegelaub 2004).
Scope management was beyond your simple of the Sodor job team as it was provided in the task information. Clear goals and methods were also provided and no feasibility review was necessary. Therefore the first main planning activity of the Sodor team was with time and cost management - to produce a Gantt graph and believed costs schedule based on the work breakdown composition and provided activity precedences to determine an estimated project end night out and task cost.
The next stage in planning was to choose vendors. Owner selection process was carried out by one member of the team performing as project director. This was the place that the rest of the team must have had more suggestions, as two important issues in task management would arise which possessed implications later - risk management and quality management.
Risk Management
The PMBOK devotes a whole knowledge area to risk management and PRINCE2 identifies risk as one of its components. The PMBOK suggests four stages of risk management - id, quantification, response and in the end control.
The Sodor task was totally reliant on third party vendors for both supply of materials and construction. The biggest identifiable risk for the job would be the failure of any supplier or service provider to deliver in time. This might be particularly relevant to the duties within the project which were on the critical journey in the initial estimated plan. Therefore the supplier selection for these responsibilities must have been carefully considered.
Risk is usually quantified as a function of the risk's occurrence probability and event impact. (Williams 1996). The likelihood is a hard judgement to make but the team was supplied with ratings that have been based on how reliable the vendor was. The impact was the charges cost for overdue project delivery. The contractors for both critical jobs of jetty design and development, and installing piping equipment were only graded 2. This turned out to cause problems later.
Methods of risk management include striving to reduce the risk (Gannon 1994). Certainly, reducing the chance by choosing higher rated vendors would have had a cost and would have to have been judged to be affordable. This was partially considered in owner selection policy, but should have warranted more attention from the project team.
Another way of working with the risk in a genuine situation would have been to 'deflect' it (Gannon 1994) by transferring it to the distributors. Penalty clauses could have been inserted into their deals for overrunning the quoted process durations. The Sodor task team weren't able to do that, so reduced amount of the risk was the only option available.
Quality Management
The PMBOK also devotes a complete knowledge area to quality management, so that it is actually an important area for job professionals to consider. Inside the Sodor project the quality of the sellers was the best area for factor. The only signal of the was the rating provided, which was used in owner selection.
In a real world situation vendors might have been required to comply with International Group for Standardization quality benchmarks such as ISO 9001:2008 interacting with Quality Management Systems Requirements, but this is not an option for the task team.
After the completion of the planning phase with supplier selection, your final baseline plan and costings were produced. In order to adjust the job end night out to conform to the required routine it was made a decision to pay overtime to the painting service provider. At this time cash flow also needs to have been considered by delaying the changing times for the purchase of materials until necessary but it had not been, a potentially huge mistake in the industry world.
Monitoring and Control
Gannon (1994) explained that task performance can be assessed by the comparison of actual improvement to the original planned progress at any level in the project. The slippages in the Sodor job at 25 weeks were moved into into the project Gantt graph and it was found that consequently of slippage in critical journey activities the job would overrun by 4 weeks compared to the baseline, and penalties would apply.
The project team experienced 3 selections - admit the penalties, decrease the length of a task on the critical journey by paying overtime (known as the time-cost tradeoff problem, (Liberatore and Pollack-Johnson 2006)), or reconsider the precedence requirements (Liberatore and Pollack-Johnson 2006).
It was discovered that paying overtime to the painting service provider to lessen the project length by four weeks was less than the potential fines and less complicated than reconsidering the precedence requirements.
Further problems at the 25 April 2001 level were triggered by the vendor selection for the jetty erection. For the same reasons as above it was decided to purchase overtime on the jetty erection in doing so minimizing the critical journey back in range with the mandatory completion particular date.
By the job closeout it was found that because of this of a reduction in a critical avenue activity the task completed 14 days early and gained bonuses.
Summary
The job was successful if the standards was to complete the job with time. But more careful collection of vendors could also have slice the costs of the task - the choice of the tube installation vendor specifically might well have produced substantial bonus products.
The complete exclusion of any thought for cash flow was also a significant mistake. In the 'real' commercial world, assignments can are unsuccessful because of cash flow problems, so this must have been known.
Conclusion
The Sodor Essential oil Terminal project was successful in conditions of completion of the task within the mandatory time. Pinto and Slevin (1988) strategy success simply by achieving the projects time and costs plan, accompanied by an satisfactory performance. This process, however, ignores the factors of commercial success available on the market, and how the future of the organization all together has been affected by the task, factors recognized by Shenhar et al. (1997).
The Sodor task could have been completed within a smaller budget, with increased commercial success and larger gains for future investment in the organization if higher attention had been paid in the areas of seller selection in terms of risk management. The financial pressure of the top project on the business might have been offset by increased attention to costings in terms of cash flow optimization.
These negative conclusions can be immediately attributed to the task team's lack of real teamwork in not questioning each other's actions enough or speaking about relevant issues.
