University Portfolio: Project Management Leadership and Execution

This portfolio entry, authored by a student, delves into the multifaceted role of a project manager, emphasizing the importance of leadership and effective execution. The entry begins by highlighting the project manager's responsibilities, which include meticulous planning, project initiation, seamless execution, and comprehensive project closure, all while ensuring the project's benefits align with the organization's market value and customer base. The author stresses the significance of fostering a motivated and engaged team, aligning individual goals with project objectives, and cultivating essential skills like insightful questioning, conflict resolution, and risk management. A real-world scenario is presented, illustrating challenges faced in a project where the author, as project manager, navigated responsibilities without complete authority, underscoring the need for strong leadership, technical expertise, and effective communication to overcome obstacles and ensure project success. The entry is supported by various references related to project management.

Running head: PORFOLIO
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Name of Student
Name of University
Author’s Note

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Portfolio entry 2
“While project management is an activity undertaken with others, the projects
themselves involve these other people doing—or not doing—just what is needed. This
happens in an environment where the project manager has far less authority than
responsibility, and it is this limitation of authority that characterises the project manager's
role and propels the most successful project managers to demonstrate leadership.”
I have been allocated as a project manager for various projects. The post of a project
manager sounds fascinating but it has numerous responsibilities that I need to fulfil. My
responsibility is not only towards the organization but also my team members (Zwikael &
Smyrk, 2015). My responsibility deals with proper planning, initiating, executing and closing
a particular project. Besides carrying out these stages, I have to ensure that the project is
beneficial for the entire organz8ation and so that any loophole in the project does it affect the
organization negatively in the aspects of its market value as well as its customer base
(Verzuh, 2015). The team members are to be treated carefully so that are stay interested did
the project, besides this, they are required to be motivated from time to time so that they do
not lose interest from the project and they involve themselves completely into the project. I
try to related the project goals with the personal goals of the staffs so that they feel more
energized in working for the project, besides this I require to have a set of certain skills such
as ability to ask numerous questions that are penetrating in nature, detect few assumptions
which are usually unstated and hence resolve various conflicts that take place within the
team, it might be between the employees or between me and an employee (Martens &
Carvalho, 2017). I mostly try to avoid conflicts they do not impose serious threat on the
project as well as the organization. Besides this, I am supposed to have various management
skills that would be required for the purpose of managing the entire team as well as the

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project. The most important among all the duties is recognition of the risks that might have
serious impact on the project (Samset & Volden, 2016). These risks are usually formally or
informally measured using various strategies throughout the lifecycle of that particular
project.
I had been allocated as the project manager of a certain project within my
organisation. In the role of a project manager I had to take up various responsibilities. Using
the responsibilities, I also had to carry out various tasks like planning of the scope along with
defining it in a detailed manner so that it is easy to understand for everyone (de Carvalho,
Patah & de Souza Bido, 2015). Sequencing and activity planning also belonged to the list of
responsibilities along with resource planning, resource planning included the amount of
resources that are to be used for the project, it also included keeping track regarding if the
resources are readily available, if they are not available they needed to be in stock so that they
are accessible when required. Preparing schedule, estimation of time required by the project,
creating charts as well as schedules, analysing various risks, managing the risks as well as
issues (Milosevic & Martinelli, 2016). Reporting and monitoring progress are also parts of
my responsibilities, besides this building leadership in team, strategic influencing, partnering
in business, working along with certain vendors, scalability, interoperability and probability
analysis, controlling of quality of the project as well as realization of the project are some
additional responsibilities that I need to take care of. After performing these activities, I took
permission from the project manager of that particular project, his responsibility is to review
my performance on each and every aspect and then if he feels that I have done a good job, he
allows me to proceed with the project (Heldman, 2018). Besides this, there are more areas
that I have to take care of, some of the areas include maintenance of good level of
communication, and this is the most important skill that is required to be present in a project
leader. This is because these skills help various team member to connect to each other and

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carry out the activities of the project in an effective manner. I need to explain the goals to the
team members clearly, I also need to divide the tasks, expectations as well as responsibilities
between the employees. A skill that I am supposed to have is obtaining strong skills of strong
leadership. This skill helps me in decision making during crucial situations when making
decision is very tough. Technical expertise is also a skill that is required in the post of project
manager. This helps me in obtaining technical knowledge regarding various issues that have
been related to various technical aspects. The knowledge on the theory as well as aspects of
technical had helped me in taking numerous steps whenever needed.
In this case, I would present a real scenario of my experience. I had been allocated as
a project manager of a specific project which we were told to carry out. In this particular
project, I had to make a planning and execute accordingly. I had to provide instructions to the
members but I did not have the authority to perform any of these tasks. I faced an issue in this
case, I had numerous tasks that were left to be divided but I did not have any member to
divide them, I discusses the matter with the senior project manager but I was still not
provided with the authority to perform tasks. I was said to select more members for the
purpose of carrying out the remaining tasks. I selected some members but they were not
skilled enough for performing these activities. In this case, I was said to train the employees
on the skills that are required for this particular project.

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References
(Heldman, 2018)
de Carvalho, M. M., Patah, L. A., & de Souza Bido, D. (2015). Project management and its
effects on project success: Cross-country and cross-industry
comparisons. International Journal of Project Management, 33(7), 1509-1522.
Heldman, K. (2018). Project management jumpstart. John Wiley & Sons.
Martens, M. L., & Carvalho, M. M. (2017). Key factors of sustainability in project
management context: A survey exploring the project managers'
perspective. International Journal of Project Management, 35(6), 1084-1102.
Milosevic, D. Z., & Martinelli, R. J. (2016). Project management toolbox: tools and
techniques for the practicing project manager. John Wiley & Sons.
Samset, K., & Volden, G. H. (2016). Front-end definition of projects: Ten paradoxes and
some reflections regarding project management and project governance. International
Journal of Project Management, 34(2), 297-313.
Verzuh, E. (2015). The fast forward MBA in project management. John Wiley & Sons.
Zwikael, O., & Smyrk, J. (2015). Project governance: Balancing control and trust in dealing
with risk. International Journal of Project Management, 33(4), 852-862.