Project Management Case Study

Primarily focus on strategic project management fundamentals.

With reference to Graham and Englund’s, (2004) statement that project today stems from ad hoc decisions without any strategic plan that aligns to the organisation’s objectives, every one seems to want to be involved in a project all in the name of change. He demonstrates this through the six step process called, projects without strategic emphasis:

Project Creeps

This is as a result of departments initiating small projects with the premises of addressing change in their area of focus without even following the right procedures of implementing a project plan. It was prevalent in FNB’s case where John Hart initiated a project on his division, corporate banking to integrate all

This creates problems for the project leaders as they are bestowed the responsibility that they cannot carry out and the management does not understanding why they can not deliver thinking that the training was a failure whiles project leaders are not fully knowledgeable in the project management processes.

It is always anticipated that by training the project leaders on project management they will be able to come up with solutions while the top management are not considering that taking a manager from his position and putting them as a project leader adds up to their responsibilities of having to not only manage a project team but other managers in other business units as they need to give support into the project to succeed especially if it’s an organisational

This was apparent in FNB’s case when the project was send for quality review with more funding pumped into the project. Jim Gunn, the project manager was replaced with a new project manager and three senior analysts assigned to the corporate division banking project

Things started rolling with the project reviewed and other tasks like user requirements being redone even though there was resistance from the consumer banking and corporate banking division. Three months down the line John Hart took an early retirement with the newly appointed project manage resigning and leaving the organisation and the project was presented formally for discussions

These are the lesson that should be learned by executive management to get involved in organisational projects by being the sponsors and ensuring that the projects of the organisation are aligned to the organisational strategy. And that the resources should be divided accordingly to meet all the requirements and give appropriate support to the projects conducted within the