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Question 1: A successful project requires good oversight from an experienced project manager
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Utilise real case
examples in your argument
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Technical competencies
of an effective project manager may include; finance and procurement knowledge, strategic planning, advanced
systems or IT skills, and strong subject matter expertise
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An efficient leadership style, and effective communication competencies are two of the most important skills that
a project manager should possess in order to enable a project to be successful
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Leadership is essential in many aspects of life including politics, religion, business and social networks
(Kedharnath, 2011)
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Leadership is an effective tool used by the project manager to shape the project outcome, and the absence of
competent leadership is directly related to project failure (Riaz, et al, 2012)
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Leaders influence and inspire individuals by creating visions rather than goals
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A project manager’s leadership style is an important factor in project success (Jiang, 2014)
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Transactional leaders focus on goals, using rewards or penalties as motivation for achieving
these goals, whereas transformational leaders focus on visions, and use enthusiasm for motivation, assisting
individuals to develop into leaders themselves (APM, 2020)
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The research was conducted in a large technical and logisticsorientated department of a government organisation, which restructured its workforce into smaller project teams,
in an effort to facilitate more flexible and efficient forms of working
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Transformational leaders were found to have staff members who
reported greater satisfaction, motivation and commitment, resulting in them being more willing and motivated to

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complete their tasks to a high standard and within the necessary timeframes (Keegan and Den Hartog, 2004)
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It is apparent that effective leadership directly correlates with project outcome and performance (Fiol et al, 1999:
Lowe et al, 1996), but, being a successful leader is dependent on the perception the people you are trying to
lead have of you (Edmondson, 2017)
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Employees were unhappy with this leadership style and the board called for his resignation, stating that he
wasn't meeting deadlines
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He returned in 2000 and combined several leadership styles such as being democratic
and more relaxed, allowing members of the team to take a more participative role in regard to decision making
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3 trillion (St
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Marc Russell Benioff; Founder and CEO of Salesforce Inc, has both visionary and a democratic leadership style,
allowing employees at all levels of the organisation the opportunity to sit in on important strategy meetings and
communicate with executives (Bort, 2012)
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Being a strong leader means being approachable, showing
consistency, being knowledgeable and having good communication (Gray, 2015)
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Participants undertook a survey measuring project managers leadership style, teamwork,
stakeholder satisfaction and project performance, in Taiwan’s construction industry
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To successfully lead a project, a project manager must understand they are accountable for setting the
expectations for their team members and setting direction (Rastogi, 2018)
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It could be said that leadership is the accomplishment of goals through good communication with others (DuBrin,
2004)
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High quality communication skills are key to success in work and life (Hereford, 2006)
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A project manager is the central contact point during a project, thus the ability to clearly communicate the overall
vision and project outcomes to a wide variety of different people is necessary
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It is critical for project managers to have good
communication with both internal and external stakeholders and their project team
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The study carried out in the construction field, proposed that communication from management
influences performance
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Deprived communication can frequently lead to misunderstood requests, indistinct goals, ineffective
plans and various other factors that will cause a project to fail (APM, 2020)
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In 2003, NASA’s Space Shuttle Columbia was lost during re-entry
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A
2011 reflective case study by Rodney Rocha at Nasa, concluded that this was ultimately caused by unsuccessful
communication
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A report released by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CIAB) stated that NASA had an overconfident
and inflexible culture
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NASA had developed a dysfunctional corporate culture that impaired open communications between
mission managers and working engineers (CIAB, 2003)
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Engineers who understood their systems and technology attempted to
highlight risks, but these concerns never reached the managers on the Mission Management Team that had
operational control over Columbia (Rocha, 2011)
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”
Managers did not possess the necessary communication skills to lead on this project and ultimately, the project
was a catastrophic failure
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As both case studies agree,
communication is a necessary skill for project management as it improves information flow and improves the
overall achievement of project performance (Cheung et al, 2013)
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Good management communication includes sufficient feedback paths

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through organisations (Lock, 2010)
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Too little communication may not provide a clear enough picture for team members to follow, but
too much can be overwhelming
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(PMI, 2013)
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Both leadership and
communication interlink with one another
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Similarly, if you have strong communication skills and are able to communicate with your team
in an effective way, your approach to leadership is more likely to be effective
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Question 4: It is vital that projects are delivered on time
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Considering the importance of being on time, discuss what is a critical path? Furthermore, highlight what value/benefit
does identifying a critical path give to a project?

The Critical Path Method was first designed in 1957 by the DuPoint du Demours Company to provide managers
with a useful tool for getting projects with numerous elements that were over schedule, to get back on track
(Berman, 2017)
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Time management is one of the most important things in delivering a successful project (Lock, 2010)
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Effective time
management involves prioritising tasks in order to complete them at a high quality (University of Georgia, 2014)
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The main benefits of time
management are; increased efficiency in the workplace, higher quality of work produced, and projects being
delivered on time
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Ineffective time management may result in missed deadlines, a lower quality
of work and decreased productivity within the team (Kashyap, 2019)
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In order to keep projects on track,
realistic time frames should be set and resources be assigned appropriately (Duggan, 2018)
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This essay will discuss the importance of a critical path in the overall success of a project, identifying
what value it adds and highlighting how it is an essential technique in project management
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It is a
mathematically based algorithm for planning, managing and analysing the time of a project (Kuknhavets, 2018)
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When the project manager focuses on these tasks that make up the critical path, the likelihood of the
project being completed by its deadline is maximised (Ray, 2019)
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By dispensing a large project into a sequence of smaller tasks, it makes it easier to measure development and
understand whether delays are looming, or resources are being misused (Mentis, 2015)
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The study assessed how the implementation of CPM affected the completion
time of projects within the industry
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A critical path enables a project to be structured and organised, reducing risks and assessing budgets
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Once a time frame has been allocated to each prioritised task, the critical
path can be formed as the string of activities that add up to the longest overall duration, meaning it is the shortest
time possible to complete the project (Slate, 2018)
Delays in tasks on the critical path have a direct impact on the project completion date
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An activity on the critical path cannot be started until its
predecessor activity is complete; if it is delayed for a day, the entire project will be delayed for a day unless the
activity following the delayed activity is completed a day in advance (Smith et al, 2008)
The critical path method covers five steps:
1
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Constructing the project network

3
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Critical path identification

5
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A project network is created by allocating each task to a particular employee or team, each of these tasks have
a deadline that is required to be met in order for the next task to begin
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The more critical a task is, the higher the priority is for the company, meaning more company
resources can be used on it (Roseke, 2016)
A basic example of a critical path is, activity X takes four months to complete, activity Y also takes four months
to complete, yet it cannot begin until activity X is completed
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We can understand that the quickest time the project will take to
be completed is eight months, as activities X and Y take four months each, and one cannot commence until the
other is complete
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By activity Z being independent, it means it is less critical, and can be completed at
any three-month interval within this eight-month window (Rodriguez, 2019)
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This allows less time to be spent on planning and more time to spend on actual
completion of project tasks (Wiese et al, 2016)
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Priorities can be quantified based on analysis of all task duration estimates (Lock, 2010)
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The benefit of using the critical path
method for the project manager, is that it is an effective tool to identify if any delays can be handled with built-in
idle time - the “float” (Saeed, 2009)
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CPM allows the project manager to clearly see
where effort cannot be compromised, so forces them to invest time in determining what is likely to go wrong in
each task and build in some level of float, or accept that the end date of the project will be affected (Microsoft,
2020)
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Just because a project is delivered on time doesn’t
mean it fits with the other constraints of the iron triangle, quality and cost
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If applied incorrectly it may not always take into
consideration cost or quality, both of which can have an adverse impact on timing (Ray, 2019)
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Consistent
review is necessary in order to identify any changes or potential delays (Jonsdottier, 2018)
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Other issues with CPM include; it can be
highly complex for large scale projects, estimating activity completion times can be subjective, and if inaccurate
can overthrow the whole process (Lhabrang et al, 2004) and, CPM cannot be used for a project that does not
have any sort of priority (Bishnoi, 2018)
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It is vital that projects are delivered on time, delays in project procedures can disturb
the overall success (Ansah and Sorooshian, 2018)
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With
ineffective time management comes risks such as, decreased productivity, missed deadlines, or lower quality of
work
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With managers identifying the potential for delays
in certain stages of the project at the planning phase of the project, this allowed for them to allocate more time
or resources to these stages before beginning the project
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Critical Path Management is one of the cornerstones of project management theory, addressing the importance
of projects being completed on time (Cohen, 2018)
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CPM makes it easier to schedule tasks that are not on the path and arrange resources most efficiently
(Berman, 2017)
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CPM identifies which activities
are most essential or critical for project success; connecting cost and resource allocation with each subtask, the
path quickly tells you what is triggering the project to go over budget or fall behind schedule (Landau, 2019;
Slate, 2018)
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Effective time management leads to improved productivity, faster and more accurate results and overall, more
success (Pettit, 2020)
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Title: PROJECT MANAGEMENT ESSAY (2 QUESTIONS)
Description: NOTES THIRD YEAR ESSAY PROJECT MANAGEMENT BUSINESS MANAGEMENT

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