Crisis Management Techniques in Project-Based Organizations

This paper discusses crisis management techniques in project-based organizations. It covers crisis responsibility, planning for crisis in project management, and crisis planning strategies and tools used for emergency management.

Managing Project Based Organizations 1
Managing Project-Based Organizations
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Table of Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................3
Crisis Management Techniques.............................................................................................................4
Crisis Responsibility..............................................................................................................................5
Planning for Crisis in Project Management...........................................................................................6
Crisis Planning Strategies and Tools used for Emergency Management...............................................6
Framing the Crisis.............................................................................................................................6
Tools to Help Project Managers Plan for Crisis.....................................................................................7
Bibliography..........................................................................................................................................9

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Executive Summary
Crisis can happen in any project and at any given time. Therefore, it is important to make
sure that there is a precise plan in place for crisis management. Crisis management is the
practice of detecting threats to a business as well as its stakeholders and the approach that
should be employed to counter such threats.
Introduction
In life, not all things that people plan move smoothly. While things in the corporate sector
can run as planned just like a well-oiled machine for quite a reasonable period, at some point
problems manifests themselves hence calling for instant intervention. Certainly, the severity
of the problem together with its effects can literary brings everything to a standstill in the
company not until the matter is resolved. For instance, catastrophic happenings like that of
the BP oil spill, the crashing of the Sony PlayStation network and the 2008 financial debacle;
all these are situations of emerging crisis which usurped all other urgencies (Ahern, Leavy,
and Byrne, 2014, p.1373). Therefore the manner in which an organization responds to a crisis
can have long-lasting repercussions on the manner in which it is perceived by its customer
base as well as the entire public. Consequently, by being so much contemptuous to an issue
or inconsiderate to the affected persons by the disaster can lead to more severe financial hit to
the organization as well as the loss of both reputation and market cap. Thus, a crisis is an
event that leads to dangerous and unstable conditions which can greatly affect a person,
groups, or the entire society (Sage, Dainty, and Brookes, 2014). Crises are considered to be
negative changes in the business, security, political, social and economic setting, particularly
when they happen unexpectedly without any warning signs.
With all that said, how does this connected to a project manager who is supposed to be
responsible for overseeing a crisis project itself? What are the techniques as well as the most
outstanding practices that should be applied by the PM to make sure the crisis project gets

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moving in the desired manner and effectively? As such, crisis management plays a significant
part in project management. Crisis can happen in any project and at any given time.
Therefore, it is important to make sure that there is a precise plan in place for crisis
management. In light of this statement, this paper discusses crisis management techniques,
and also gives some answers to project managers on how to prepare for a crisis in project
management.
Crisis Management Techniques
Crisis management is the process of identifying threats to a business as well as its
stakeholders and the approach that could be employed to counter such threats (Ika, 2015,
p.1111). As a result of the unpredictability of events, corporations should always be ready to
cope with the would-be for drastic modifications to the manner in which companies
undertake business activities. Therefore, crisis management demands that decisions are made
in the shortest time possible, and in most cases after a crisis has already happened. Thus, to
be in a position to decline the uncertainty in such an event of a crisis corporations often
develop a crisis, management plan. In any business, it is important to be prepared for any
problems which are likely to arise at a time when it least expected. The success of the
organization is determined by the way in which it handles issues to do with the crisis. Even
though crisis management only entered the field of management not long time ago, the truth
is that it has greatly contributed to the prevention of huge management tragedies.
Accordingly, crisis management is the use of approaches intended to aid a company deal with
unexpected and noteworthy negative happenings. Certainly, since crises happen
unexpectedly, it is important that organizations make quick decisions to curb the damage to
the corporation. Therefore, in that case, the most primary actions when it comes to crisis
management planning is to look for a specialist regarding crisis management to work as the
crisis administrator. Additionally, there are other crisis management practices such as:

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 Including different stakeholders in all the planning stages as well as action stages
 Establishing as well as teaching the crisis management team or even going for
external crisis management companies with a well-known track record in a
company’s corporate sector.
 Deploying of monitoring system applications in addition to practices to be able to
early cautionary signal detection of any predictable emergency.
 Having detailed planning in response to as many possible crises as much as possible.
Crisis Responsibility
When something goes wrong, the most common knee-jerk reaction by most people is to
immediately move into the destruction control approach in addition to taking defensive
mechanisms. As such is a vestigial feature of peoples’ cognizance to makes moves to protect
themselves from problematics situations. However, during the time of a crisis, such an
approach is not the most suitable approach to use. The idea of acting defensively shows an
impression to the public that one has something to cover or they are not carrying themselves
in a compassionate manner (Cascetta, Carteni, Pagliara, and Montanino, 2015, pp.27-28). In
reference to the BP oil spill instance, the primary obstructions of that particular crisis were
the way in which the firm reacted in the eyes of the public. Instead of possessing the problem,
BP Company all over a sudden started pointing fingers at other organizations saying they
were also involved with the rig which exploded. Indeed, in the case of BP, the problem was a
failure on the side the crisis management which cast the firm in a very bad light (Heravi,
Coffey, and Trigunarsyah, 2015, p.987). In the long run, it ended up calling for massive
restitution and a costly public relation campaign in an attempt to revitalize the firm’s
tarnished name.
Accordingly, in view of the PM, some of these actions can be external to their realm.
Nevertheless, the PM has to function as the one to oversee the communication plan, thus will

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require regular monitoring of the communication traffic. Moreover, regular discussion with
shareholders gives a worth insight since it enables the team to suppress any undesirable
sentiment early if it is done professionally and expediently.
Planning for Crisis in Project Management
Successful project management call for PMs to look for better approaches to handle,
oversights, crises, mistakes, disasters and miscommunications (Fearn-Banks, 2016).
Therefore, PM is supposed to have operational tools to plan and forestall for this
predicaments. While these tools are not used daily by PMs, it is important that they are served
with these tools in preparation for an emergency (Van Ruler, 2015, p.187). Crises
management means that the PM has better mitigation means in place and preparedness for
any crises. In this sense, it helps to lower the occurrence as well as the management of crisis
effects in a better way if crises happen. Therefore, some of the crisis management preparation
tools plus project managers’ skills include contingency plans, risk analysis, table exercise and
logic charts (Coombs, 2014). These tools are applied differently depending on the type of
crisis and also require different support from rescue, police, fire and medical.
Crisis Planning Strategies and Tools used for Emergency
Management
Framing the Crisis
Most crises transform into projects after the deleterious impact id gone. For example, after
the crashing of the TWA 800 airline in 1996, where no person was saved, this is
accomplished as a project after the threat of outburst as well as other instantaneous hazards
have diminished (White, 2016). Nonetheless, the concern here is with a crisis happening in
the context of a prevailing project, instead of a catastrophe that develops into a project. As a
result, project managers require extra tools to be able to respond to acute emergencies, thus in
such a case is where crisis management tools turn out to be dominant.

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Tools to Aid Project Managers Plan for Crisis
Risk Analysis: It is a vital crisis planning tool which aids the PM to determine what is likely
to go wrong, what is most likely, as well as what has the greatest effect (Costantino, Di
Gravio, and Nonino, 2015, pp.1746-1747). Seemingly, the inclusion of an occurrence’s
possibility of happening together with the rigorousness of the impact helps to determine
priorities. The analysis of an incident helps the PM and the team to realize the trainings
gained in a real-time disaster and then come up with plans on how to alleviate the
consequences of a parallel occurrence in future.
Contingency Plans: Once a risk analysis has been undertaken, the PM will have to translate
these risks into contingency plans. Therefore, the project manager has to ask themselves
questions like “What is likely to go wrong with my project?” After identifying these risks, the
PM should make a list of risk related to a specific project, which is the outcome of risk
analysis. Then they can ask themselves “Among these risk which is the most probable to
occur?” and “which of these risk will have the most severe effect?” “On whom and what?”
The question on whom and what “On whom and what?” indicates the susceptibility of the
company to the identified risks (Kerzner, 2018). Nonetheless, project managers are supposed
to advance plans which employ the use of data from risk scrutiny to organise them to and the
company for a wide base of tragedies. Accordingly, the PM can appoint an individual to be in
control of crisis planning to bind responsibility and resources as one, hence lowering the
requisite to burden the already busy top managers with disaster preparation for a low-
probability occurrence.
Logic Charts: Logic chart utilize project flow logic to notify the flow of the project with all
reliance in an exceptionally supple, time-scale-independent diagram (Al Shobaki, Amuna,
and Naser, 2017). Logic charts are a form of the expert system since they represent the
decision-making understanding of specialists in a system which can be tracked down

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procedurally. Project flowcharts are the backbone of any peculiar computer-aided project
management tool. When a crisis happens, individuals need procures to track it down, thus
logic charts from a foundation for writing these processes.
Tabletop Exercises: Tabletops make use of evidence from the risk exploration in the
justification stage to mimic the making of decisions in addition to cations to be taken during a
real-time crisis (Kerzner, and Kerzner, 2017). Therefore a tabletop exercise entails the
process of assembling individuals who shall be reacting to a disaster and acting out probable
circumstances in advance.

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Bibliography
Ahern, T., Leavy, B., and Byrne, P.J., 2014. Complex project management as complex
problem solving: A distributed knowledge management perspective. International
Journal of Project Management, 32(8), pp.1371-1381.
Al Shobaki, M.J., Amuna, Y.M.A. and Naser, S.S.A., 2017. Strategic and Operational
Planning As Approach for Crises Management Field Study on UNRWA.
Cascetta, E., Carteni, A., Pagliara, F. and Montanino, M., 2015. A new look at planning and
designing transportation systems: A decision-making model based on cognitive
rationality, stakeholder engagement, and quantitative methods. Transport policy, 38,
pp.27-39.
Coombs, W.T., 2014. Ongoing crisis communication: Planning, managing, and responding.
Sage Publications.
Costantino, F., Di Gravio, G. and Nonino, F., 2015. Project selection in project portfolio
management: An artificial neural network model based on critical success
factors. International Journal of Project Management, 33(8), pp.1744-1754.
Fearn-Banks, K., 2016. Crisis communications: A casebook approach. Routledge.
Heravi, A., Coffey, V., and Trigunarsyah, B., 2015. Evaluating the level of stakeholder
involvement during the project planning processes of building projects. International
Journal of Project Management, 33(5), pp.985-997.
Ika, L.A., 2015. Opening the black box of project management: Does World Bank project
supervision influence project impact? International Journal of Project
Management, 33(5), pp.1111-1123.

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Kerzner, H. and Kerzner, H.R., 2017. Project management: a systems approach to planning,
scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.
Kerzner, H., 2018. Project management best practices: Achieving global excellence. John
Wiley & Sons.
Sage, D., Dainty, A. and Brookes, N., 2014. A critical argument in favor of theoretical
pluralism: Project failure and the many and varied limitations of project
management. International journal of project management, 32(4), pp.544-555.
Van Ruler, B., 2015. Agile public relations planning: The reflective communication
scrum. Public Relations Review, 41(2), pp.187-194.
White, C.M., 2016. Social media, crisis communication, and emergency management:
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