HR Project Management Final Team Report

Running head: PROGRESS, RESULTS, AND FINALIZING THE HR PROJECT 1

PROGRESS, RESULTS, AND FINALIZING THE HR PROJECT 3

Progress, Results, and Finalizing the HR Project

8/25/2020

Professor Jennifer Young

Progress, Results, and Finalizing the HR Project

Directing and managing a project or project work refers to project managers' actions to ensure the various methods of execution of the processes in projects are produced, directed, and well-managed to meet the desired expectations set forth before the project commences. Directing and managing project work is successful when project managers ensure that all the project departments work closely and towards a common goal. Commonly, a team is regarded as well-structured if they work together regardless of the differences in departments (Meredith et al. 2017). Therefore, project managers will be successful in managing and directing the project work if they have a project plan. In every project, a plan is essential because it is the primary tool in directing and managing the execution processes. All the project plan's subsidiary plans are contained in the project plan, and hence, it acts as a tool to guide the project manager in propelling the project towards success.

Project management can be a slippery slope task, especially when the organization does not have all the required resources to propel the project through to completion. That makes it a complex discipline to navigate through. Managing and sustaining progress when leading a project in an organization is essential. Here are some of the strategies projects managers can use to ensure their projects are sustainable and well-managed as they progress towards completion.

Creation of a flow of communication: in each phase of a project, project managers and the team members should understand that communication is necessary. Establishing a flow of communication between project members is vital. More so, the stakeholders for the project are also important people in the project. Hence, project managers should create a constant flow of information to and from stakeholders as well. Effective communication fosters transparency between the team members of the project. It reduces the chances of receiving numerous emails of phone calls in case of an emergency problem (Meredith et al. 2017). Having a working execution platform is paramount in ensuring the flow of communication. Project managers can sync comments regarding the progress of the project, photos, documents, and calendars when monitoring the updates and budgets and scheduling for the changes in case they occur. Change cannot be executed if there is a lack of a reliable flow of information; therefore, PMs should strategically lay a medium to ensure effective communication flow (Kerzner, 2017).

Habitual planning: project management has five phases. Project managers do plan before starting the project. But they have to continuously plan, revise the plans, and design other plans during the project's progress and till the end of the project thereof. Some projects require extensive planning and hence, should be revised as the project enters the next stage. Risks and uncertainties occur as the project progress; therefore, planning for changes in such emergencies is a strategy that every project manager should use to maintain and sustain the progress of the project.

Budgeting the projects with work execution platforms is another vital strategy in ensuring the maintenance and sustainability of projects. In projects, material, wages, permits, and other equipment undergoes an exchange of financial sources as well as vendors. From the start of a project to the end, project managers should track and manage all the expenses related to the initial budget of the project. Project managers can remain effective in budgetary terms of the project by using software that is crucial and effective in managing costs as the project moves through the key phases. Using project management templates such as the best-in-class work execution is vital in enabling project managers and stakeholders to make the input of the costs, make a budget for the changes and calculate the associated costs to keep track of the finances needed to bring the project to completion (Meredith et al. 2017). Therefore, integrating designs such as DocuSign helps to reduce the time needed in collecting signatures for each invoice and hence, creates time for the project managers and their team members to attend to the project at hand.

There are four basic strategies used in addressing and resolving risks in a project. Risk avoidance, transference, mitigation, and acceptance are the basic risk control measures every project manager should be aware of. Risk avoidance refers to how project managers apply safeguards to eliminate or reduce the uncontrolled risks that might cause vulnerability to the project. Project managers can achieve risk avoidance through training, educating, and implementing security controls to safeguard the project. Avoidance is paramount in identifying threats and vulnerabilities and then implementing strategies to mitigate the threats and reduce their attack as much as possible.

Risk transference helps project risk managers to transfer or shift the threats to other areas. It means that the responsibility to accept the risk is delegated to another department or person. Therefore, in achieving transference, project risk managers should hire outside organizations to offer services. Hence, in the process of risk occurrence, the hired organization will take responsibility in case of risk emergence. Risk mitigation is another strategy in addressing and resolving risks in control of projects. Project risk managers use this strategy to reduce the impacts of vulnerability. It considers when something happened and not whether it happened. Through this strategy, project risk managers tend to have strategic risk management plans such as the disaster recovery plan, incidence response plan, and business continuity plans in place to address the threat and resolve it before it affects the project (Kerzner, 2017).

Risk acceptance is the last strategy to use when controlling risks. In this strategy, project risk managers will understand the consequences of the project's risks and accept them without controlling or having mitigation measures. It is a strategy that goes with the notion that there will always be risks in projects. Therefore, there are impossibilities of eliminating risks, and hence, risk analysis is essential in this case. Through the determination of the risk levels from the risk information, evaluating the probabilities of risk occurrence and the controls in place is essential since it ensures that acceptance is strong and justified. Risk avoidance and risk mitigation are vital strategies in controlling risks as compared to transference and acceptance. Risk avoidance involves safeguarding the project from risk vulnerability, while mitigation involves helps in reducing the impacts of the risks to the projects. They are vital in ensuring that the projects run smoothly without interferences from vulnerability (Meredith et al. 2017).

In project management, much attention is often given towards planning on how to start and run the project. Many project managers forget that closing projects are equally important in ensuring the success of the entire project. A lot of work is involved in the completion of the project. Many tasks need completion even after the project is over. Things such as approvals, signatures, and payments are essential during project closures. Closing a project is a process, and one of the phases of a project and hence requires project managers to take some actions before starting to close down the project and arranging a post mortem of the processes of the project and how everything has been done (Kerzner, 2017). That involves gathering the core team members and receiving feedback from them regarding what worked and what failed. Good project managers will document this information and use them for future references. Another action is to complete the project's paperwork by having approvals and relevant signatures and outstanding payments. With automated software such as ProjectManager.com, managers can create reports through a single click. Timesheet reports will help them know the hours worked by a given team member during the project and how much they should be paid.

In conclusion, it is a slippery slope, especially when the organization lacks proper project managers and resources to propel the project through to completion. Project managers lead the team members towards the achievement of common goals, the success of the project. Directing and managing the project towards the set goals and success is vital in projects. Hence, project managers need to use various strategies to ensure that they direct and manage the project successfully. More so, projects face risks during their execution. Project risk managers have to explore the best strategies in addressing and resolving the risks during the control phase. Closing of a project is an important phase in projects; project managers should adhere to various actions before beginning to close down to ensure viability.

References

Kerzner, H. (2017). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.

Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., & Mantel Jr, S. J. (2017). Project Management: A Strategic Managerial Approach. John Wiley & Sons.