Q2. The Whittmanhart project is heavily dependent on its human resources (i.s. project team members). What do you think the project manager would have done to ensure that the team members commit to this project? Elaborate your points with examples.
A2. From what I have analyzed from the case study of WHITTMANHART project, the project manager divided his project team members hierarchically into two core groups, creative team which consists of creative director, visual designer, and information architect, and technical team that has client/server programmers and technical lead. Creative team possibly will handle the design of the application interface, as well as how the application displays its information on the interface. As for the Technical team who deal with the programming of both client and server side of the application. Both teams have a lead respectively, known as creative director for creative team and technical lead for technical team whom will report their project activities to the project manager. In this case, the concept is quite similar to functional organization structure, a hierarchy that most people think of when picturing an organizational chart (Schwalbe, 2008, pg. 52). With this hierarchy, it enables clear picture for the project manager to manage the human resources efficiently while providing legitimate rights for the project manager to issue orders to project team which stated in one of the nine influence bases of Thamhain and Wilemon’s theory (Schwalbe, 2008, pg. 367).
From my opinion, initiating a good project environment is important to develop a successful project. Hence, the project manager should be following the theory of Thamhain and Wilemon’s Influence and Power. By referring from the nine influence bases, financial influences are the main point to affect the commitment of the project team members. What I mean financial influences are penalty and reward influence. Penalty will be dealt on the team members who are not performing their task well and vice-versa. Performance can be measured via observations and interviews. These selected influences are similar to the combination reward power and coercive power (Schwalbe, 2008, pg. 368). Not only that, the each task of the task should be divided by using work breakdown structure created by project manager. From here, the project manager will then assigns the staffs into respective tasks. Thus, the project manager will have a clear view of the project team who are responsible of the tasks they are in. Finally, progress reports also play their role of what the project team has accomplished during a certain period. It should be created and passed to project manager weekly to ensure that they are working on the project from time to time.
Q3. According to the article, how do you think they measure the success of the project management? Explain your opinion.
A3. The project management success relies on many factors. From my point of view, the project team focuses on achieving the requirements specified during the meeting between the stakeholders and the project team. Before that, the background of the business problem should be clearly identified in order to generate requirements to achieve. Of course, they must have clear image of the problem they are facing. From the article, they had an advantage of developing the application as the business owner of the project was very close to the problem (Sean Schnor, 2004). Additionally, the skills possessed by project team members affect the structure of the application developed. Without a strong design and information architecture skills, the project may not be able to pass through user’s acceptance due to certain criteria (lack interactivity of the system, slow application performance, etc.). Last but not least, a project development always needs a methodology. In the WHITTMANHART project, the project team had divided their roles to work parallel and perform in sequence, from Setup/Scoping, Analysis, Design, Implementation, and Integration. Thus, it reduces development time and able to complete the project in time.
Sources:
1. Kathy, S., 2008. Information Technology: Project Management. 4th ed. USA: Course Technology.
2. Sean, S., 2004. The Development Life Cycle of a Flex Application (ANALYSIS). Flex Developer Center. [Online]
Retrieved from: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/cycle_05.html
[Accessed: 22 July 2009]
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