Assume that you are a “newly assigned” project manager, what are a two or three questions you should ask the organization, before undertaking the leadership role, and why? Note: Support your responses with scholarly peer-reviewed articles or journals. After submitting your response to the discussion question, type at least two pages for initial post and type two peer replies in response to your classmates posts with a minimum of 300 words. This is due tomorrow

Responses:

response 1 for Sana Khan:

As a newly assigned Project Manager, the questions which I deem most important are as follows:

1: What is a project about? – What are the project’s objectives, goals or what problem we are trying to solve through this project? How it will affect the other projects, features and aspects of the business? – Answering all these questions will help determine the scope of the project. Once the scope is clear, it will become easier to focus on other aspects of the project (Harvard Business Review Staff, 2016).

2: How much time do I have for this project from start to finish? – Is it a high priority project? Why it is a high priority project (is it requested by a highly important stakeholder or is it affecting customers and need to be addressed immediately/urgently?). Neglecting project time management can lead to project failure as it is clearly visible in the failure of the construction projects in Malaysian construction industry (Chin & Hamid, 2015).

3: Who are the project stakeholders? Identification of stakeholder is extremely important since they can provide you the required information and help you put the project on the right track (Harvard Business Review Staff, 2016).

Once I have the answers for these questions, I will start investigating about the budget, resources, location, deliverables and other aspects of the project as defined by the Project Management Institute (Vachan, 2012).

References:

Chin, L. S., & Hamid, A. R. A. (2015). The Practice of Time Management on Construction Project. Procedia Engineering, 125, 32–39. doi: 10.1016/j.proeng.2015.11.006.

Harvard Business Review Staff. (2016, November 3). The Four Phases of Project Management. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2016/11/the-four-phases-of-project-management.

Vachan, B. (2012). Applying project management principles to research projects in a health setting. Radiographer, 59(1), 5–7. doi: 10.1002/j.2051-3909.2012.tb00166.x.

response 2 for Sibi:

Final output of the project ?

I need to know what the project is going to deliver, a project output could be a gadget, software, publicity design, event management. Right from Initiating the project till the delivery to a customer or client all documentation should include the list of outputs from the project. For example If I’m making a gadget the list will be as follows:

• Start off
• Brainstorming
• R&D
• Design
• Prototyping
• Testing/troubleshooting
• Final release
• Production
• Support

Project Whereabouts and Deadline ?

The PM position could be a fresh start for a project or replacing another PM who left the organization. Also, it is always an advantage to know the deadline so the resource allocation and budgeting can be tweaked to meet the deadline or buy extra time for the team to complete well ahead on time. So it is important to know the whereabouts and deadline.

Reference:

https://thedigitalprojectmanager.com/10-project-management-questions-ask-before-starting-project/