Hr Paper
Your HR project to develop a centralized model of delivering HR services has progressed through very critical stages of the project thus far. It is now time to present actionable, decision-making information to project leaders. This can be best accomplished when projects have been successfully managed, devoid of any major risks, and have been properly closed out and finalized.
Write a five- to six-page paper in which you:
1. Explain what it means to successfully direct and manage project work, and identify and discuss 3–4 strategies you might use to manage and sustain progress in your HR project. Be specific.
2. Identify and discuss a minimum of three strategies that could be used to address and resolve any risks within the control of the project. Hint: See Exhibit 14.5 in the textbook. Is any one of the strategies you selected more important than the others? Why?
Exhibit 14.5
RISK EVENT RESOLUTION STRATEGIES RISKS WITHIN PROJECT CONTROL
Understand and control WBS
Closely monitor and control activity progress
Closely manage all project changes
Document all change requests
Increase overtime to stay on schedule
Isolate problems and reschedule other activities
Research challenging issues early
Risks, especially WITHIN PROJECT CONTROL
Establish limits to customer expectations
Build relationships by understanding project from client’s perspective
Use honesty in managing client expectations
Work with client to reprioritize cost, schedule, scope, and/or quality
Carefully escalate problems
Build team commitment and enthusiasm
RISKS OUTSIDE PROJECT CONTROL
Understand project context and environment
Actively monitor project environment
Understand willingness or reluctance of stakeholders to agree to changes
3. Describe 2-3 actions a project manager may take as they begin to close out the project. Be sure to justify the actions you discuss.
4. Review Project Management in Action: The Power of Lessons Learned (pages 518-520 in the textbook) and provide an overview to the project team on the significance of the information. Be specific.
Pg. 518-520 from book
PROJECT MANAGEMENT IN ACTION The Power of Lessons Learned Projects are discrete. They have a beginning and an end, at which time the project team disbands and moves on to other things. Despite the fact there has inevitably been significant tacit learning during the project, there is often only a limited capture of this into a sharable form for future reuse. Too often, as the project team dissolves, the learning fades into the memories of individuals minds. This makes it extremely difficult for others to benefit in the future from the insights learned. The usual excuses for this loss echoing through the corridors include just too hard, not enough time, team disbanded before we had the chance, and many more. The key error here is the incorrect assumption that learning during or from projects is an added bonus or a nice- to-have luxury. This is not the case in best practice environments. Those fortunate enough to work on a well-led project will have observed how learning is just part of how we work together. Experienced and knowledgeable project leaders understand the value in capturing lessons learned, as an embedded part of normal daily activities. They engage the team to deliberately harness knowledge and highlight lessons throughout the project to provide insights and enhance performance (during the project and beyond). The value of doing this greatly outweighs the costs of implementation when it is done well and there is a culture of trust and collaboration. This capture of learning at each stage builds the capabilities of those involved and can form a knowledge base to be used by the team or by others in future stages and future projects. In some cases, this knowledge base remains only in the heads of those involved because there is no attempt to capture it in explicit form. This is a mistake because it is difficult to transfer this knowledge beyond the immediate team (although it can be to some extent if there is a culture of story- telling and low staff turnover). There are many barriers to developing an effective lessons-learned knowledge base, and culture is often the primary villain. If people involved in the project are not reflective and not willing to invest a little time to capture and share their insights, the lessons are not captured. Equally, culture influences the motivation to look at what has been learned through the discovery process before the project starts. Good projects start with more questions than answers: Has this been done before? Did it work? I so, why? If not, why? What has changed since the last time? (Something that did not work before might now if the context is different.) If we did it the same, would it still work, or do we need to adapt it? These questions can be effectively answered only if there is some access to what was learned previously and those seeking answers can find it in a convenient and trusted way. This is why talking to someone you know and trust, who was actually involved in the prior project, is always the preferred option. However, in modern organizations, this is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve because of challenges such as high use of contracted team members, high employee mobility, regular restructures, incomplete records in lessons-learned systems (which may be poorly designed), and the fast change of supporting technologies. So what other good options exist? Some organizations (including NASA and the U.S. military) have developed quite sophisticated lessons- learned databases. These are usually supported by processes that require people to submit comments into the project systems that will help other people in the future. Over time, these what we know based systems build a large volume of data that can be interrogated to provide relevant insights when you need them (hopefully proactively to avert a potential risk becoming an issue, rather than reactively when the issue has occurred). These systems work best when people make it part of their normal work activities to record both errors and their solutions as well as what went right and why. Insights of both types are essential to ongoing success. The danger of rigid processes and systems is that people do not see the value in recording something that they believe is for the benefit of unknown others in the future and will not help them (but costs them precious time). So they either just don t do it, or they record only very basic, nonspecific information that will not be particularly helpful for someone in a future context. Some organizations have a stick approach and link recording of quality lessons learned to performance reviews or project sign-offs. Others take a carrot approach and reward those who record effective lessons learned as judged by other people who found and applied the lessons. Another approach used by an international project management organization is to combine a content- based system (as described above) and an under- standing of who knows what. People seeking insights can ring a service desk with their questions and the (experienced) employee answering the phone discusses what it is they need to find out. The service person can be from a range of backgrounds, such as a librarian, a semiretired employee with a long history of the organization s projects, a specialist, or a nominated representative of an internal group such as a technical committee or community of practice. Source: Arthur Shelley, http://www.organizationalzoo.com/about/arthur_shelley. Sometimes these people will know the answer, but if they do not, they can find a person or document that can guide the seeker. This PM organization records all questions asked and the relevant resources that helped the seeker in a database that can be interrogated in the future. This hybrid of tacit and explicit knowledge was found to be highly effective for fast discovery of ideas. It enabled good ideas to be quickly applied elsewhere and helped to prevent reinvention of ideas already developed in other parts of the organization. It also enabled the discovery process at the beginning of projects to reduce repeating of errors from earlier experiences. Successful people learn from Their mistakes AND the mistakes of OTHER,
5. Used at least three (3) quality academic (peer-reviewed) resources in this assignment.
Use reference book Contemporary Project Management-
Timothy Kloppenburg
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