Network Project Management: A Case Study of NASA

This paper discusses the fundamentals of project management, including project leadership, risks in designing and executing major projects, and management ethics. It also explores the leadership styles and factors contributing to project success. The case study of NASA is used as an example throughout the paper.

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The best project managers are emotionally driven a case study of NASA
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Executive summary
Leadership skills that leaders should have plays a critical role in the growth and development of
an organization. Leadership is the process by which leaders of an organization may influence
people’s behavior in a way that they enthusiastically and willingly strive towards achieving the
objectives of an organization. The primary purpose of writing this paper is to develop an
understanding of the fundamentals of project management. It will expressly reflect on project
leadership, risks that are associated with new projects designing and current research theories
and management ethics. Introduction
Project management fundamentals identifiers, the major process and the needs of project
management. These are scope, quality, budget and schedule. For company to attain its objectives,
there is need to have leaders with adequate skills and knowledge to control business process
effectively and efficiently. To understand the fundamentals of project management, I will discuss
risk in designing and executing major projects, leadership issues, management ethics, leadership
style, project success factor and ethical issues based on the case NASA case study.
Risk in designing and executing major projects
Regardless of a well-planned project, it encounter some troubles. A risk is a uncertain condition
or event that may affect a planned project. The risk that may affects the design and execution of
major projects involves, weather, technical issues, cost, political issues, environment, clients etc.
Some of the basic ways that a company may use to handle this risk involves:
 Avoidance- the best thing that can be done is to avoid, it is possible to prevent the risk
occurrence.

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 Mitigation – if risk can be avoided, it should be mitigated, this means taking appropriate
action to minimize damages that would be caused by the risk.
 Transfer- transfer risk to someone else, e.g. it can be transfer to an insurance company.
Leadership issues
Leadership issues are problems that arise from ineffective management of a project.
Leadership is not just a title; a leader must be capable of guiding a team and motivating it toward
accomplishing the goals of the organization. The unmet goal is as a result of bad leadership
which might come along with some problems which include: lack of morale, loss of
coordination and teamwork as well as lack of direction.
If a leader is not competent, he/she cannot lead a team and therefore they all lack vision due to
lack of clear instructions, they don’t have a guide on how to carry out their task and will,
therefore, work with no direction which most likely leads to failure of the project [1].There also
lack coordination and teamwork among the team members because the leader has failed in
bringing them together; everyone works alone and is likely to make mistakes that may affect the
whole project. The team members also lack morale as the project leader tend to care less about
the project as well as the wellbeing of his/her team members; this may cause a high employee
turnover.
Leadership styles
A leadership style is a way of directing, implementing strategies and motivating workers
by the leader.

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Charles’ leadership models are based on two continuums axes which are: emotional- logical
decision-making process and the intuited- sensed data preference. These two continuums give
rise to four types of leadership which are:
Cultivating emotional-intuitive leader- this kind of leader is useful in appreciating people and
cares much about them; he/she can build strong loyalty.
Emotional- sensing leader: this kind of a leader is able to make workers feel that they are part
of the project, he/she is successful in building peaceful teams and can work with the most
challenging people, and they are all able to work as a team.
Visionary logical-intuitive leader: this type of a leader who is creative and innovative, always
focused on getting new ideas that lead to research in the early stages of a project.
The directing logical-sensing leader: this type of leader who is appropriately organized and
with a high level of discipline, he/she is a system builder who puts the tasks first and achieves
the goals passionately.
Project success
Having a good project leader is a key to the success of the project, a leader should be able
to properly plan and effectively communicate to his/her team members for a project to succeed.
The team has to work together to implement the plans; they also have to plan smart where all
participants should be present during planning to know the direction the project is to take. Proper
planning does not only help in achieving goals on time but also keeps the team on focus. Proper
communication is another necessity for a successful project. It is necessary that the manager
updates the team on the specific tasks and goals to be accomplished [2].

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In case of a problem arising it should be communicated immediately to avoid affecting
the whole project negatively. This can only be achieved if the leader can develop and maintain
food teamwork and therefore, the best leadership style that can lead a project to success is the
emotion-sensing leader. This is because such a leader is able to build a harmonious team and
even draw those members that are very difficult to deal with so that they can also participate and
together work as a team which is very important for a project to be successful [3].
Ethical issues
Ethical issues are situations where organizations or individuals are stuck between two
options, one which is right while the other is wrong. Hubble telescope had a situation in which
they experienced the ethical issue of conflict of interest and also duties of the society. In both
cases, they acted unethically [4].
During its launch where NASA was pressured politically for timely launch and was
answering to the executive branch, similarly Morton Thiokol was experiencing the same
pressure, and therefore the decision made for launching may have been made under the wrong
interest rather than the ethical interest of the wellbeing of the crew and the morality of the system
[5].
The company would have avoided the ethical issue on conflict of interest by being aware
of all interested parties and be open about them, this way they could be able to prevent future
disgrace and also avoid preferences made due to conflict of interest.
They have also had an ethical issue of duties to society, with the launch of the Hubble
telescope there were obviously environmental consequences through contamination of air by the
rockets which caused global warming and affect the entire community through climate change. It

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brought along religious conflict where Catholics could not admit that earth is at the center of the
solar system. By considering the duties of the social issues, they should have tried to avoid
matters that could affect the society though not all that could be avoided they should seek for a
smooth progress [6].

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References
[1] Koepsell, D. (2010). On genies and bottles: scientists’ moral responsibility and dangerous
technology R&D. Science and engineering ethics, 16(1), 119-133.
[2] Markham, A., & Buchanan, E. (2012). Ethical decision-making and internet research:
Version 2.0. recommendations from the AoIR ethics working committee. Available online: aoir.
org/reports/ethics2. pdf.
[3] Müller, R., & Jugdev, K. (2012). Critical success factors in projects: Pinto, Slevin, and
Prescott–the elucidation of project success. International Journal of Managing Projects in
Business, 5(4), 757-775.
[4] Müller, R., & Turner, R. (2010). Leadership competency profiles of successful project
managers. International Journal of project management, 28(5), 437-448.
[5] Rolston, H. (2012). Environmental ethics. Temple University Press.
[6] Dang, J., Yuan, K., Shi, J., Huang, H. and Wang, L., 2019. Monitoring System Design Based
on Kingview Sewage Treatment. Journal of Scientific Research and Reports, pp.1-11.