STRATEGIC PROJECT MANAGEMENT

ONLY ONE QUESTION TO SOLVE

QUESTION 4 [20 Marks]

All stages of the project life cycle appear to be typified by one conflict or the other. A project manager should be able to categorise conflicts into a chronological perspective of the project life cycle. Use a project that you are familiar with, and discuss the conflicts that occurred or could have occurred at each of the four phases of the project lifecycle.

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4.3. Conflict in the Project Lifecycle In this section, the different types of conflicts that frequently occur in the project environment will be categorised and characterised. Furthermore, the nature of these conflicts will be amplified. The project life cycle will be linked with the fundamental conflict categories. This will help in the discovery of certain patterns of conflict that are associated with the different periods in the life of a project. Armed with this knowledge, the PM can do a faster and more accurate job of diagnosing the nature of the conflicts he or she is facing, thereby reducing the likelihood of escalating the conflict by dealing with it inefficaciously. 4.3.1. More on Project Life Cycle Various authors (Pinto and Prescott, 1988, Enshassi et al., 2016, Thamhain and Wilemon, 1975a, De Wit, 1988) etc have defined the stages of the project life cycle in various ways. Please refer to Figs. 1.3, 1.4, and 1.5). An archetypal typical definition consisting of four stages is that of (Adams and Barnd, 1997): conceptualization, planning, execution, and termination. In the first stage, top management provisionally, sometimes unofficially, approves preliminary planning for a project. Often, this management recognition is preceded by some strictly unofficial bootleg" work to test the feasibility of an idea. Initial planning is undertaken, basic objectives are often adopted, and the project may be "scoped out." The second stage is characterised by detailed planning, budgeting, scheduling, and the aggregation of resources. In the third stage, the major share of the actual work on the project is accomplished. During the final stage of the project life cycle, work is completed and products are turned over to the client or user. This stage also includes disposing of the project's assets and personnel. It may also include preparation for the initial stage of another related project to follow. 4.3.2. Categories of Conflict All stages of the project life cycle appear to be typified by one conflict or the other. Over four decades ago, (Thamhain and Wilemon, 1975, Thamhain and Wilemon, 1975a) did extensive research on conflicts in projects. These conflicts centre on matters such as schedules, priorities, staff and labour requirements, technical factors, administrative procedures, cost estimates, and of course, personalities. They collected data on the frequency and magnitude of conflicts of each type during the different phases of the project life cycle. Multiplying conflict frequency by a measure of conflict magnitude and adjusting for the proportion of PMs who reported each specific type of conflict, they proposed an estimate of the intensity of the conflicts. Based on their study, it appears that the conflicts may be classified into three fundamentally different categories (Thamhain and Wilemon, 1975, Thamhain and Wilemon, 1975a). 1. Groups working on the project may have different goals and expectations. 2. There is significant uncertainty about who has the authority to make decisions. 3. There are interpersonal conflicts between the stakeholders in the project. Conflicts may be categorised over differing goals, uncertainty about the locus of authority, and between personalities. For the entire array of conflict types and stakeholders, please refer to Table 4.1 (Meredith et al., 2017) Table 4.1: Project Conflicts by Category and Stakeholder Categories of Conflict Goals Authority Schedules Technical Stakeholder Interpersonal Personality Project Team Priorities Client Schedules Technical Priorities Personality Functional and senior management Schedules Technical Priorities Administrative Labour cost Source: (Meredith et al., 2017) These types of conflict involve the project stakeholders in recognizable ways. The diverse approaches goals and objectives of the PM, senior management, and functional managers are a basic and constant source of conflict. Next the conflicts will be categorised into the chronological perspective of the project life cycle. These phases may be divided into: Project Formation In this stage, most of the conflict revolves around the intrinsic confusion of setting up a project in a matrix management environment. At this initial stage, almost nothing about the project or its governance has been decided. This also means that the technical objectives of the project has not been explicitly defined or established. To tackle the confusion cum conflicts in this build up stage, four fundamental issues must be addressed not necessarily in the order presented below: 1. The technical objectives of the project to a degree that allows more detailed planning in the build-up stage must be specified 2. There must be a synergy between the senior management and functional managers in ensuring that they commit enough resources. 3. The priority of the project in view, relative to other projects of the parent organisation, must be explicitly set out and communicated. 4. Defining the organizational structure of project and who is responsible for what. This will stop administrative conflicts, procedure conflicts and authority conflicts. Some team members tend to centre on interpersonal differences rather than "Technical issues' and this is really a *thorn in the flesh" to the project manager. This poses a great challenge to the project manager or team leader to deal with such individuals so that the Forming stage can be obtained before moving on to the Performing stage as outlined by Project Build-up In this stage, conflicts about project priorities, schedules, administrative procedures, technical conflict are possibilities. The project build-up stage is where the highest level of conflict is expected. Main Program Schedules are the main source of conflict. Other conflicts may result due to no punctual completion, personality conflicts; conflicts arising from managing increasing number of interfaces, technical conflicts, change of scope etc. For example, a start-up mobile manufacturing company is working on a new model of a smartphone. All specifications have been put in place and the project is in the design phase. About fourteen weeks into the project, the management decides that the phone will be a Windows-based smartphone instead of an Android-based smartphone. This decision was based on market research driven by data analytics. The design team may vehemently disagree to this and there may be a conflict between the management and the design team Project Phase-out The main conflict in this stage is schedule. What usually happens is that the unresolved problems of main stage are carried over to this stage. Second main cause of conflict in this stage is personality conflict. Technical conflicts are usually rare in this phase. To conclude this subsection. It is worthy to note conflict is an integral part and fact of life. People often disagree about what they are doing, why they are doing it and how best they can do it In fact, if you are working in any kind of collaborative task effort and there is no conflict, then something may be wrong