Unit 2 Project Management Life Cycle Critique

Project management life cycle is the process by which organizations effectively and efficiently plans, organize, coordinate, and control projects from the beginning to the end to achieve its goals quickly. It involves various activities that are followed in the stages of completion of projects that include phases such as initiation, planning, execution, and closure. Companies worldwide are either hiring professionals or outsourcing project management due to the advantages it has, such as improving communication, increasing customer satisfaction, improving goal setting efficiency, and providing accuracy in assessing risks. The theory of the project management life cycle has various limitations that hinder companies from adopting its use. If project managers do not have adequate knowledge and experience, they will likely experience many problems that pose a disadvantage to their firms.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

The first limitation when investing in the project management life cycle is that project managers are expected to invest in specialty software that incurs high costs to the companies. Enterprise training and change management for employees make the projects hard to implement and expensive. They require that employees receive a lot of training and hiring of specialists depending on the needs of the managers (Evans, 2003). The company's stakeholders are likely to include various unplanned features for increasing the costs and likelihood of the project to fail.

Another limitation that may emerge in implementing the theory of project management life cycle is an increase in complexity. Making the shift from a technology-oriented to a process-oriented approach involves multiple stages, which may confuse the team, causing considerable delays in the project delivery and a stressful environment in the organization (Evans, 2003). The abstraction of business processes from business logic to true agility forces staff members to work under strict guidelines. Sometimes, project management does not leave any room for creativity as team leaders always focus on the management processes and set unachievable deadlines. Another limitation of the project management life cycle theory is communication overhead that emerges as a result of new employees joining the company when hiring a team to deal with the management of a project (Evans, 2003). The packaging of business logic for modularity requires large teams that add extra communication layers in the organization that do not always match organizational cultures; hence, they create a barrier to achieving the project's goals.

Improve Project Management Plans of two other Project Managers

Project managers need to improve the plans that they adopt in the projects that they are expected to complete. If I were a project manager of the projects by other managers, I would learn to differentiate when to inspire creativity among the team members and when to strictly follow the company's project plans (Adhikari, 2018). I would also ensure that I increase my communication skills, especially when dealing with larger project management teams to avoid communication overheads. I would also reduce the team size to the smallest possible for effective communication that matches my organization's culture.

I would also use the Gantt chart to schedule my projects to list all my tasks charted across timelines for easy viewing of the entire project at a glance. Some tasks depend on others before they begin or end, and they create bottlenecks later. When they are linked on the Gantt chart, it is easy to avoid slowing down schedules as the projects are divided by diamond symbols and milestones that indicate that one phase is accomplished and the other has begun (Adhikari, 2018). I would also create a planned budget that will help me to easily control projected costs and keep them within the set budget. I would ensure that I combine my technical skills with various management attributes to provide a strong foundation for easy adaptability of the constant changes of project dynamics in the company.

References

Adhikari, S. (2018). Project Management Cycle (PMC), Its Phases and Characteristics - Public Health Notes.Public Health Notes. https://www.publichealthnotes.com/project-management-cycle-pmc-its-phases-and-characteristics/.

Evans, N. D. (2003). Business innovation and disruptive technology: Harnessing the power of breakthrough technology... for competitive advantage. FT Press. https://aiu.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781323315699/cfi/6/22!/4/26/6/10/4@0:95.3