Although, Gary is an accomplished project engineer, the transition from employee to manager is not as easy as he thought. Supervising a team, understanding the working dynamic of your team, and knowing how communicate with your team is a project managers skill. Throughout the scenario below Gary failed to make the right decision, lead his team, and communicate with is customer, superiors, and team. We discuss the Gary’s Situation, the project, the project issues, what Gary did right and what he did wrong and finally, what I do differently. The Situation On 2 December, Project Manager Gary Allison indentified a technical specification error on the Orion Project.
This analysis of the Orion Shields case will examine the performance of Gary Allison as the newly hired program manager for the Orion Shield project. As the program manger for this project, Gary Allison has been faced with the normal challenges of a program manager; however, he faces extreme challenges when he finds out what Henry Larsen, the director of engineering has in store for him. There were many problems in the beginning of the project that caused it to nearly fail including, technical, ethical, legal and contractual issues that affected Gary’s role as a project manager. Introduction Gary Allison was a mechanical engineer for the Scientific Engineering Corporation (SEC). He was employed there for years before he became promoted to become the project manager over the Orion Shield Project.
Executive Summary Henry Larsen, the director of engineering at Scientific Engineering Corporation, offered employee Gary Allison, a position as Project Manager on the Orion Shield Project. Gary reluctantly accepted this position. Throughout the life cycle of the Orion Shield Project Gary made many mistakes in the area of the project management. He also did some things well, although these were very few. This report will focus on the Technical, Ethical, Legal, Contractual, and many other issues Gary encountered throughout the life of the project.
That person would be Mary Ann Wright – part spark plug, part disciplinarian, and all Ford. (Kreitner and Cassidy, 2008) Project Life Cycle Project managers face many difficult challenges. They work outside the normal organizational hierarchy or chain of command because projects are temporary. They must rely on excellent “people management skills” instead of on giving orders. Those skills include, but are not limited to,
• Multiple management challenges among subordinates, all of which Peterson was handling well, but which required some decisions that required local knowledge to understand why they were good (e.g., moving Stevana in charge of construction) • Little contact with superiors/headquarters since taking job • Early on, Peterson antagonized some higher-ups (e.g., Cantor & Green) • A review from on high will come in two weeks What Peterson Should Have Done • Found ways to educate Hardy on the operation and engage him in decisions. Make sure he is on board with decisions and sees his own success as based on Peterson’s success • Found reasons to meet with Jenkins (his boss’s boss) to make sure he knew what a good job Peterson was doing • Set milestones and partial success criteria so that it is not necessary to wait until start up to determine whether Peterson had done a good job. Major milestones also provide excuse for inviting brass to visit and/or visiting brass to make presentation • Write periodic reports that apprise management of progress and also provide reasoning behind (unpopular) decisions – document actions and issues • Made lateral connections with people who had expertise in starting up operations, and publicized this source of expert advice The Next Two Weeks • Prepare a tightly
• Multiple management challenges among subordinates, all of which Peterson was handling well, but which required some decisions that required local knowledge to understand why they were good (e.g., moving Stevana in charge of construction) • Little contact with superiors/headquarters since taking job • Early on, Peterson antagonized some higher-ups (e.g., Cantor & Green) • A review from on high will come in two weeks What Peterson Should Have Done • Found ways to educate Hardy on the operation and engage him in decisions. Make sure he is on board with decisions and sees his own success as based on Peterson’s success • Found reasons to meet with Jenkins (his boss’s boss) to make sure he knew what a good job Peterson was doing • Set milestones and partial success criteria so that it is not necessary to wait until start up to determine whether Peterson had done a good job. Major milestones also provide excuse for inviting brass to visit and/or visiting brass to make presentation • Write periodic reports that apprise management of progress and also provide reasoning behind (unpopular) decisions – document actions and issues • Made lateral connections with people who had expertise in starting up operations, and publicized this source of expert advice The Next Two Weeks • Prepare a tightly
Erik Peterson definitely represented good leadership from every aspect of his work. At the very beginning though, he was faced with many problems existing in GMCT which had a negative impact on the company’s operations. He was trying his level best to solve these problems and to some extent, gain some outcomes which truly revealed Erik Peterson as an effective leader. Effective leaders are known to have high emotional intelligence and a prerequisite of the “threshold capabilities” of technical skills. When he found out that the chief engineer, Curt Andrews, lacked administrative skills which are a necessary component for managers starting up new operations, Erik Peterson made every effort to address this issue even to the point of replacing him with someone more capable in this position.
So we can already see that the Forming stage, took longer than it probably should have, which helped to cause much uncertainty in the team. Following the Forming stage, the Storming stage also contained much uncertainty. The Storming stage ends when there is a hierarchy of leadership established within the team. We can easily say that the MGI team never got past the Storming stage, as each person in the team had a different perception of the group’s hierarchy. Dana and Henry saw themselves as strategic contributors to the business strategy of MGI, whereas Sasha perceived them as interns and business plan writers, while Igor saw them as helping with vision and strategy.
Royce would not work over forty hours because he would be working for free due to his pay grade. Frank thought it wasn’t fair for another employee to work seventy hours to get the job done and Royce isn’t contributing the full effort of collaborating for the Carlson project. Frank wants something done to help out that situation. McGee states that Royce is too good of an employee as he has fifteen years of experience to not let him go from his position. McGee considered Frank to be patient with Royce because by Frank feeling that way towards Royce might affect him with working with future employees that are working on a future project as they volunteer to do.
At some point Eric would have to wonder, if the CEO, Jack Derry thought so highly of Randy, “Why isn’t he leading this strategic realignment? Eric has to take notice of the team competencies or lack of because any weak or missing competencies jeopardize the team goal (Luecke, 2004, p. 15). The team does not embody the essentials needed to be effective. In this case, the Fire Art Inc. team required additional skills and practices if they are to be a team or even an effective team. It needed to be managed from a senior management level as well as the middle management level.