Project Management Exercise Report Reviewing--论文代写范文

51Due论文代写平台report代写范文:“Project Management Exercise Report Reviewing”，这篇论文主要描述的是每一项目的存在都有着一定生命周期，这个生命周期包含着这个项目从概念理论上提出、研究分析规划、项目的具体执行和项目结束，在项目的管理当中可能会出现一定的风险和冲突，这就体现出管理者领导能力的重要性。

In the module Project Planning Management and Control, the students were separated into six groups to do the project management exercise. The exercise included the whole process: designing, purchasing, manufacturing, assembling, testing and delivering. First of all, each group should decide which the ‘critical path’ is and try to keep everything in that module under control during seven periods. And the final goal is to do the delivery on time and make some profits. In this exercise, our team called ‘Coffee’, which had five Chinese people. During the game processing, everything went well in period 1 to period 4 – on the schedule and under the budget – until period 5 we experienced the disaster. It was because we did not consider the risk in the purchasing ; and unfortunately, we did not notice that we had taken the highest risk one, which exactly the fatal problem happened.

Though the final result of the exercise was failed because we did not make the delivery on time and also not gain any profit, we still learned a lot, for example, risk management and some interpersonal communication skills. This essay analyzes the whole exercise from different side, including individual personalities, team lifecycle, decision making, conflict solving and Leadership.

The ‘Belbin Profiles’  Belbin简介

When individuals are put together to be as a team, people naturally contribute themselves based on their own personalities. And the roles in a team were defined by Belbin (1981): ‘the range of useful behaviours, which make an effective contribution to team performance, is finite. These behaviours could be grouped into a set number of related clusters to which the term ‘team role’ is applied.’ (Belbin, 1981) One of the most famous models that identify different roles in team-working and how the roles affect the structures of a group or a team is the Belbin’s model. According to Belbin’s model, there are eight important roles which can make a team become more effective. They are, respectively, coordinator, shaper, plant, resource investigator, monitor evaluator, implementer, teamworker, completer finisher and specialist.

Our team was assembled by five Chinese people: colleague A (Yang), B (Yin), C (Huang), D (I) and E (Fang). Colleague A was assigned as the ‘implementer’ and ‘shaper’ in the team; colleague B was allocated as the ‘teamworker’ and ‘completer finisher’; colleague C was the ‘teamworker’ and ‘specialist’; colleague D was the ‘teamworker’ and ‘resource investigator’; colleague E was the ‘teamworker’ and ‘coordinator’.

At beginning, we choose colleague A to be the leader of our group because he was the only one who has some related background, but after the first group discussion, he was found that he is very good at encouraging people and controlling the main direction of the team. Moreover, he also has the personality to be the ‘shaper’ and ‘implementer’, so thiswas very useful to push the group keep moving on, and we made a lot of decisions without any disagreement. It was efficient in decision making and division of work, but it made the group miss up some important details and caused failure.

Colleague B and C played the ‘teamworker’ very well, they were co-operative and willing to contribute their abilities to the group, for example, Person B was major in mathematics and knows about finance and accounting, so she volunteered to help doing every calculated thing (e.g. cost, budget, etc.). But as a ‘completer finisher’, colleague B did not find out some errors in the sheets or tables and it caused the workers being idle and delayed the process. Meanwhile, it was regretted that because the lack of experience of project management, colleague C, the ‘specialist’, could not provide some useful knowledge and skills.

Colleague D, as a ‘resource investigator’, she sometimes departed from the group and tried to gather some information from tutors or others instead of staying in the group always; and also, she was the first one that understood how to fill in the period booking sheet. She was a ‘teamworker’ as well, but she substituted for colleague E to be the ‘coordinator’. On the other hand, though as a ‘coordinator’, colleague E supposed to integrate the ideas and make the goal clear to members, he had not done this kind of contribution and even looked absent when the discussion was processing.

There was one missing role or gaps in our team; we did not have any ‘plant’, which is very important to contribute the creative ideas and solve difficult problems. So when we faced some problems or made risk management, we were hardly to jump out of the stereotyping thinking. In addition, there were too many ‘teamworkers’ in our team, which was the main over-represented role. It means people tented to wait for the instruction and sometimes it caused the inefficiency.

The term ‘team role’ refers to a tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others at work in certain distinctive ways. However, the Belbin’s model only represents an ideal way of job division. And most of time, it is hard to played in a totally proper way, so it is very important that group members should cover each other’s job. For example, colleague C did not play the ‘specialist’ role very well because she has no related background; and just on, colleague A has taken some classes about project management, so he covered the position. Just like his words: ‘the roles that people take in a team are seldom evident at all from their features or general appearance’.

The Lifecycle 生命周期

How can a group of strangers develop the team membership and make effort to achieve the goal, the lifecycle of a group or team is a worthy theory to know. Tuckman (1965) brought a famous theory of lifecycle, he divided the process into four stages: forming, storming, norming, performing, and in 1977, he added the fifth stage: adjourning. ‘Forming’ means to shape the group, including building a common view of communicating methods and group rules. Expect for testing the line of dealing with other members, this is an important stage to develop the relationship between members and the leader. ‘Storming’ is the stage that the conflict occurs; it is because the members still not very familiar with each other but starting to teasing colleague at this stage. Tuckman said: ‘group members become hostile toward one another and toward a therapist or trainer as a means of expressing their individuality and resisting the formation of group structure’. (Tuckman, 1965, p.386) In this stage, members may have an emotional response to the task, especially when goals are associated with self-understanding and self-change.

The next stage is ‘Norming’. This is the stage that the attitude of each group member becomes coherent. They accept each others’ point of view and leave more space to listen to others’ opinion. Neuman and Wright (1999) described this as a stage of developing shared mental models and discovering the most effective ways to work with each other. And the fourth stage is ‘Performing’, this stage was the final stage of the original model, and the group members develop ‘functional role relatedness’ (Tuckman 1965,) in this stage. Also in this stage, the members in the team start to cover each other in order to solve the problems and get better performance. Roles become flexible and functional, and group’s atmosphere becomes more energetic.

Finally, the stage called ‘Adjourning’ which is a comparatively new stage in Tuckman theory. This fifth stage was developed in 1977 by Tuckman and Jensen, their revision reflected a group life cycle model in which separation is an important issue throughout the life of the group.

To define the lifecycle of our group, I think it is better to look upon day by day in the whole week. In day 1, our group went into the first and second stage (forming and storming). In the first discussion which we had a task to make decision about the order of the standard process achieving in a project, people were actually a little bit shy and not so brave to express their own ideas. But after a while, we started to chat about the TV program that everyone all enjoyed it and at that time, we started to bring up some new ideas. I think this is the process that we move from the forming to the storming stage. Due to the time limit, we could only have a short chat and have limited knowing about each other. But on the other hand, because there were all Chinese in our group, the members were easily to get together during the break time even have lunch together and it really helped us to know more about others.

In day 2, we went to the next stage: norming. In this stage, we successfully created a sharing environment and found the most suitable way to discuss or make decisions. After day 2, on the performing stage, our team worked more efficiently because everyone knows what to do and how to do it. And on the day 5, because of the end of the module, on the adjourning stage, we said goodbye to each other and looking forward to the next chance to work together.

Decision making procedures 决策程序

In the proceeding of the project, there were a lot of issues we needed to make decisions such as critical path, arranging the schedule, purchase and manufacture outsourcing. Therefore, how to make an effective decision is very important. In our group, which was composed by five Chinese people and most of us are ‘teamworker’, we had no difficulties in communicating with each other. Every time, when in the analyzing or discussion, if any one of the five colleagues got an overall understanding first, he or she could easily explain to the rest of group members. But on the other hand, sometimes people did not discuss for the solution and just waiting for the decision then followed it.

Colleague A was the leader, shaper and implementer; so in fact, we could make decisions very quick. Almost every decision in our group got total agreement after we analyzed the SWOT together. Even in the period 5, we faced an unexpected big disaster that P210 was failed and we had no chance to do the delivery on time, we still reached a consensus in the shortest time that was to choose the most expensive but the fastest one. On the other hand, when it was really hard to decide, we tended to vote for the final result. There was a difference of opinion in P214, one side (colleague A) thought company R&F was better because its cost performance was the best, while the other side insisted that the other company was safer, and finally, three out of five members voted to choose.

There were many factors that influenced people’s decision making. To encourage people come up with different ideas, creating a supportive and non-judgmental environment is very important. In our group, under the supportive atmosphere, group members felt free to express their own opinion, and we had the same attitude that never blamed anyone for wrong decision.

In addition, we spent a lot of time to discuss how to distribute human resource and control the total cost under the budget.

Conflict 冲突

There are two different types of conflicts, functional and dysfunctional conflict. The functional conflict was defined by Massey and Dawes (2007): ‘Functional conflict is the constructive challenging of ideas, beliefs, and assumptions, and respect for others’ viewpoints even when parties disagree’. And the dysfunctional conflict was defined as ‘unhealthy behaviors within an organization such as distortion and withholding of information to hurt other decision makers, hostility and distrust during interaction’ by Menon et al. (1996).

Functional conflict is positive to the group development because it can create a dynamic atmosphere that every member in the group is willing to share ideas and contributes to the group. If the relationship between members is successful, the functional conflicts will help to resolve the problems in discussion, also under the well-negotiated environment, the group members will work more efficient. While dysfunctional conflict may cause the information blocked, in other words, when dysfunctional conflict occur, members tend to hold the information and unwilling to share or listen to others. And the bad communication between members will cause bad performance.

That our group for example, at the beginning, in the processing of deciding the duration of critical path, colleague A said due to saving money, we should make a 138 days schedule; meanwhile, colleague D brought up different point of view that the total duration should not over 120 days in order to prevent the delay which might easily to happen. It was a functional conflict, and finally we decided to re-distribute the labours and plan a 130 days schedu

le which made us save the budget and have more time to deal with the troubles which occurred very often. Otherwise, there was no dysfunctional conflict in our group. We had well communication and efficient ways to share the information. In my point of view, the functional conflict is useful to enhance the competitiveness and centripetal force of a group.

Team leadership 团队领导

Doing job as a project team is very common in the real world, and the efficacy of a team has a lot to do with the leadership in the group. Leadership is ‘the process of influencing the activities of an organized group toward goal achievement’. (Rauch & Behling, 1984, p. 46) Also, in order to improve the performance of team members, the motivation, which can be defined as ‘the extent to which persistent effort is directed toward a goal’ (Campbell, Dunnette, Lawler &Weick, ) plays an important role as well.

In order to being a leader and trying to help group members achieve the objectives, the motivation in the leadership is important. There are many ways to motivate the members, for example, the leader can give his or her compliment and rewards, or encourage colleagues to join the planning and resolution of important. Leadership is not only being a demanding leader who just asks others to do things but be the partner of everyone. As a leader, colleague A was responsible and reliable. He always devoted himself to solving different types of problems; he knew the details of the project including every module and cost, and he did very well at analyzing the situation of the project processing. Also, he was good at encouraging people and not overbearing at all. As mentioned before, under the harmony atmosphere, our group.

In my point of view, colleague A was a good leader, who had many qualities such as intellectual stimulation, energy, self-confidence, assertiveness, honesty and motivation.

When we faced to the disaster in period 5, colleague A kept encouraging the group members and passed the positive attitude to every member in the group. Therefore, even we failed in the end, we still felt proud of ourselves.

Conclusion 结论

In the project exercise, though our team was finally failed and lost a lot of money as well, we all gained a lot. I have learned the importance of well communication and proper role-play. And as a team member, I know that creating a supportive and non-judgmental environment is a good way to let people feel comfort to express his or her own opinion. Finally, as a project manager, we should always keep the time and risk management in mind, do not arrange a too-tight schedule and be too optimistic. We should realize that there can be many critical paths instead of only one. Especially in our group, we did not consider every risk that might happen, so we end up experienced the tragic result. In a nutshell, this was a successful team working experience.

51Due原创版权郑重声明：原创范文源自编辑创作，未经官方许可，网站谢绝转载。对于侵权行为，未经同意的情况下，51Due有权追究法律责任。

51due为留学生提供最好的作业代写服务，想获取更多report代写范文，亲们可以进入主页 www.51due.com  为留学生提供report代写服务，了解详情可以咨询我们的客服QQ:800020041哟。-xz