Project Management Overview

This document provides an overview of project management and discusses the characteristics of an effective project manager. It also includes case studies on the Wheatstone LNG project and Telstra's customer contact strategy.

PRJM6000 Assignment 1 [Last Name, First Name]
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Project Management Overview
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Part A
I.
Among the various projects that are recently in the news in Australia, the Wheatstone LNG
project is a notable one. Wheatstone is a natural gas field operated by Chevron. The area extends to
about 200 kilometres in the north of Onslow in Western Australia in the Pilbara coast. The project
will consist of two suppliers of LNG with a total volume of 8.9 million tonnes per annum. It will also
include a domestic gas plant with 200 terajoules per day (Cassidy, Natasha and Mitch Kosev 2015,
33-44). It is one of Australia’s biggest resource development project. Till date, it awards billions of
dollars in many contracts for the use of materials and services. In March 2008, Chevron broadcasted
to develop resources with the help of greenfield onshore LNG and natural gas (Andeobu, L., S.
Hettihewa, and C. S. Wright 2015). From then it has started extensive studies on the environment to
ensure the reduced and managed impact of the project. A project has some particular characteristics
for which it is considered to be a project. The symptoms include-
1. A plan should typically have meant for customers.
2. It should be temporary and has a particular start and end point.
3. It should contain some unique set of requirements within the project boundary.
4. A project is not the usual business.
5. A project completes when it achieves its intended goals and satisfies all requirements.
Based on these characteristics, the chosen project of Wheatstone LNG is considered to be a
unique one as the overall project will help Australia to gain benefit in terms of the economy such as
providing employment, local business opportunities, and government revenue. The project is aiming
in building a program that assists in bringing three economic development providers together to
guide small businesses at Pilbara by maintaining standards of contraction and best practices
(Corbeau, Anne-Sophie, and David Ledesma 2016). As reported, on successful completion of this
project, it will create about more than 6,000 direct and indirect job opportunities at the peak of
construction. It will also help in generating $17 billion local content spending over the life of the
project. In 2009 Chevron announced its two major gas field as Julimar and Brunello which are
managed by the Apache and the Australian subsidiary of the Kuwait Petroleum Exploration Company
(Bayzakova, Aida 2014). In 2011, Shell joined as the primary gas supplier for the project. The project
of Wheatstone LNG represents an essential source for the future supply of energy. The plan is
developed to provide customers with reliable and secured offering by one of the most integrated
energy company in the world.
II. Project Description
One of Australia’s leading technology and telecommunication company, Telstra aims at
offering a wide range of communication services setting competition with the leading
telecommunication industries in the market. The organisation provides more than 17 million of retail
mobile services in Australia with 4.9 million retail voice services and about 3.6 million broadband
services (Bentahar, Omar, and Roslyn Cameron 2015). The organisation aims at building technology-
based content solutions that are easy to use. The primary goal of the company is to know and serve
their customers with better services than any other telecommunication industry. Telstra has
undertaken the project to deliver real customer experience by implementing the strategy for
customer contact. Though many telecommunication organisations are innovating their products to
satisfy the customer needs but it is seen that the buying decisions of the customer do not on the
price alone. While choosing a brand, customer experience is the main factor that affects the whole
decision process. The project hence that Telstra undertook aims in accommodating multiple
numbers of channels across every business line, formulating a well-planned customer strategy that
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will empower the services of the customer agents guaranteeing to deliver a positive experience.
Telstra accomplished this project by first identifying the journey that needs to be excelled at and
understanding the performance changes required for each of these journeys.
II.a
The organisation of Telstra aims at bringing beneficial change in the experience of the
customers by implementing an effective strategy of customer contact. Customers are often
unsatisfied from the poorly integrated systems that business organisations use. Some of the issues
that are identified by Telstra in this respect include a lack of integration between communication,
and the channels used, the CRM s used in the communication systems does not integrate with
financial systems. The integration system that is proposed by Telstra will allow flowing of context
across diverse functions in business more effectively (Pavlidis, Katerina, and Wayne Hawkins 2015,
27). This in turn help in delivering the greater integrated experience of customers. Telstar also
implemented a customer-based solution offering a robust set of ready to use integration system
along with the APIs and connectors that link with other applications. The cloud-based customer
solution proposed by Telstra is capable of bringing changes in providing financial benefits by
consuming low-cost price. The changes which include in this project are by migrating the
applications and seats in the cloud environment, adopting cloud customer contact strategy and
implementing end to end multisite integration and more customised solutions (Bhatti et al. 2016, 72-
77). The beneficial changes that are offered by Telstra by this project initiative are providing flexible,
scalable and agile benefits in customer experience.
II.b
Telstra has always aimed its goal towards customer satisfaction and this project objective
also in line with that. Nowadays organisations are looking for service providers who can offer better
robust customer contact strategy which focusses on three major pillars that our partnership,
capability, and connectivity. The project introduced by Telstra satisfies all these three pillars in their
strategy implementation (Hirt, Martin, and Paul Willmott 2014, 1-13). Connectivity is the primary
foundation that brings business strategy and technology together to develop integrated customer
experience. Telstra organisation provides strong network capabilities to reach across critical
industries. The customer has always been the main priority for Telstra, and through this project
initiative, the organisation aims at building customer contact with the help of its vast network
application services. Telstra brand is strongly known for its capability of hosting market for customer
contact. The strategy of the project of Telstra aims at targeting business with about 50 seats
(Campbell 2016, 133). The features in the plan consist of the routing of communications, recording
of call, supervisor and agent desktop, high availability of network connectivity and real time
analytics. With Telstra’s cloud-based service, business organisations will be able to automate
incoming calls. This project lies in line with the measurable goal of the organisation introducing
better customer contact solutions and offering a unique value in business to deliver more improved
customer experience (Ahadzie et al. 2014, 958-960). Telstra took all this initiative in its project of
implementing better customer contact strategy with the help of various solutions and deliverables
links to the organisation's primary goal that is achieving happy customer experience and thus
improving the customer contact with the business.
Part B (1200)
I.
An effective project manager posses some skills or characteristics that help him in achieving
his targeted goal for the project (Blaskovics, Bálint 2016, 261-281). The features that would help to
make a project manager effective are as follows:
Characteristic 1
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Communication skill- Communication is an important skill that every effective project manager
possess. One cannot be an effective project manager if he lacks in communicating the requirements
needed for a particular project. By having this talent, a project manager would be capable of
conveying the goals of the project to all the members of the team and at the same time can plan the
project effectively by communicating about the requirements of the project and time required with
the stakeholders. Communication is a type of skill that many project managers lack to possess and
thus the project outcome is not gained as expected (Silvius, AJ Gilbert, and Ron PJ Schipper 2014,
40).
Importance of communication skill for project managers:
To achieve the power of good communication, one can practice by improving the presentation skills
that are needed in every meeting of a project (Papke-Shields et al. 2017, 169-179). An effective
project manager needs to have a sound communication skill to articulate his ideas, deliverables, and
expectations about the project objective to the vendors and other members o9f the team. Active
communication skill will also help a project manager to obtain feedback from his team members by
communicating with them about their work schedules and discussing ideas that are needed to be
implemented further in the project (Sunindijo, Riza Yosia 2015, 67-83). Practical communication
skills consist of different categories-
Non-verbal communication: While communicating effectively about 7% of the discussion that is
carried out are by verbal means and about 38% of the conversation gets affected by the quality of
the tone in which the connection is conveyed depending upon the volume and pitch and rest of the
50% mainly depends on the posture or the gesture of the person. A project manager has to manage
the whole team along with the project. So an effective project manager should be polite to his team
members and should not lose control over others in case of the critical situation instead he should
try to communicate the matter effectively with the members and resolve it.
Ways by which a project manager can gain useful communication skill:
1. Be present: Being the main body of an entire project team, a project manager needs to stay
current and always available to the team. A project manager needs to possess a clear
understanding of the roles of particular individuals in the organisation.
2. Adapting communication plan: A project manager needs to have a great communication plan
to communicate the needs of the team and the project accordingly.
3. Planning regular meetings: To communicate effectively in the team, a project manager is
ought to schedule regular meetings with the different stakeholders and employees facilitating
effective communication with them.
4. Using a RACI chart: In case if the project manager faces difficulty in figuring out the lines of
communication, then he may opt for preparing a RACI chart or in other words Responsible,
Accountable, Consulted and Informed table.
Characteristic 2
Team management skill: A project manager need to have the capability of effectively managing a
team with which he is working. While processing a project, team members of the project team help
in achieving specific plan related works. The procedure of handling a group of people or individual to
achieve a common goal in a program is known as team management. Effective team management
offers the following assistance- better consequences of the project, increased effectiveness, better
notions, mutual sustenance, increased proficiency and sense of success. A project manager who is
about to achieve all these benefits within the project team is said to be an effective team manager
(Livesey, Peter Vincent 2016, 90). Managing a team effectually leads to restored coordination
amongst the team members. People within an organisation can express their inner potential
reinforcing their expertise while tackling the challenges that are present within the organisation. This
automatically improves the performance of the whole squad leading to better teamwork and
reduced risk resulting in the delivery of performance with better outcomes. (Walther et al. 2014, 24-
31) When a project manager can manage the team to work collectively and encourages them to get
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enthused and motivated, it automatically leads to augmented efficiency. Each member of a team
consists of different ideas, vision, skills, etc., A project manager is said to be effective when he can
manage all these members and motivate them to apply their different services to challenge the
problem, they come up with more well-organized and quick explanations (Aga et. 2014, 806-818.
Managing the team to work composed gives the team followers the opportunity to better know
their co-workers better for their strengths and weakness (Seed, William R 2014, 1447-1459). An
effective project manager should possess this skill to encourage the members in supporting each
other to achieve their common goals. Useful team management skill of a project manager increases
strong completion amongst the team adherents which provides staffs in a team to produce and
recover their services further. This leads to increased competency. Celebrating the achievement of
the squad in achieving the goals is a part of the project manager’s responsibility to be an effective
project manager. This would excuse for the success of each in the team. This attitude of a project
manager gives them a greater sense of accomplishment. To become an effective team manager, a
project manager should possess this following features or characteristics:
1. He should avoid favouritism to give credit.
2. He should allow employees to make mistakes.
3. He should have good communication capability.
4. He should set processes to carry on the project accordingly.
5. He should restrict criticism.
6. Ge should be able to align group goals with the organisational goals.
7. He should motivate each team members.
8. He should carry on with periodic assessments.
9. He should see to maintain discipline in the team
10. He should be able to manage conflicts within the organisation.
Characteristic 3
Negotiation skill: Among all the effective assistance that a project manager should possess to be an
effective project manager, negotiation skill is one of the critical power. A project manager has to
negotiate with different stakeholders as well as vendors in different phases of a project. To carry out
this negotiation effectively, a project manager needs to possess this skill. In a project, consultation
can take place in phase be it in the formal or informal nature (Chaghooshi, A., Alireza Arab, and S.
Dehshiri 2014, 447-460). Formal negotiation is done typically with the providers and suppliers of the
project depending on some issues about agreeing about some contracts or policies related to the
project. Informal consultation in a plan is carried out to resolve some queries or conflicts or to obtain
some internal resources (Takey, Sílvia Mayumi, and Marly Monteiro de Carvalho 2015, 784-796). A
project manager to carry out a negotiation in a project with different stakeholders and vendors need
to poses some essential negotiation skills like-
1. He should be able to set goals and limits of a project.
2. He should control his emotion while negotiating with others.
3. He should possess excellent listening skills.
4. He should be able to communicate effectively to reach a specific satisfactory decision while
negotiating with others in the project.
5. A project manager should know the importance of negotiating and should be able to close
the consultation at a proper time when it is needed.
Useful negotiation skill falls under two categories:
1. Competitive negotiation: This type of negotiation skill implies obtaining the best deals
without keeping in mind the interest of the other party. An effective project manager should
try to avoid this type of negotiation in a project. Being an effective project manager, he
should keep in mind the interest of the stakeholders and other vendors also allowing his
interest in the project.
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2. Collaborative negotiation: This type of consultation takes place when the parties involved in
the come to a single point of contract where it keeps all the interest of the parties. This talks
type of consultation will help in establishing a long-term relationship between the
negotiating parties.
II.
As per the case study provided, to move all the call centres of the significant Australian
insurance provider from their current location to an overseas location to reduce the operation cost,
the above mentioned characteristics or skills are essential.
Communication skill is critical to the way to communicate the idea to other members of the
call centre to make them understand the importance to reduce the operation cost of the
organisation.
This can be done by the following ways such as-
1. By communicating with consistent messages
2. By delivering message from the higher officials of the organisation that are congruent to the
mission of the organisation.
3. By creating a RACI chart in order to plan effective communication with the stakeholders in
order to reduce the cost of the operation.
Team management skill of the project manager is also necessary as in moving the team to
an overseas location; he has to manage the entire team by satisfying the needs of each team
members.
This can be initiated with the following activity-
1. Creating customer service vision that helps the team working in the company to work
accordingly.
2. Creating smart customer service goals that work.
3. Performing skill assessment test for the team members.
Negotiating skill: To select a foreign place, the project manager needs to negotiate with
other providers and stakeholders to reach a particular point of decision.
The activities here include-
1. By clearly defining the business objective to the service providers.
2. By drawing boundaries in the negotiation procedure.
3. By considering the liabilities of the business while negotiating.
It is the project manager of the organisation suitable overseas location that can be selected
for the Australian Insurance Provider in New Zealand. The place is ideal for moving up the call centre
in all respect. After moving the call centre there, training of the overseas staffs will be carried out
using providing proper communication skills and skills that the call centre representative’s needs.
This can be done by training the call centre representatives with regular classes for communicating
with the customers, teaching them the basic criteria that needs to be fulfilled in order to achieve
customer satisfaction and many more. For carrying out this project initiative, about 150 current
teams may face redundancy but being an effective project manager, and I will try to negotiate the
matter with the crews so that the interest of both the parties is satisfied. Thus, being an effective
project manager of the Australian insurance provider company, I will try to maintain and follow all
the necessary elements that need to be developed for the project initiative.
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