Project Management

Project management has become one of the most popular tools for organisations, both public and private, to improve their internal operations, respond rapidly to external opportunities, achieve technological advances, streamline new product development and manage the challenges arising from the business environment.

From the off, it's clear MegaTech put a distinction between the organisation as the overall project and the daily activities in which the organisation engages while producing goods and services as processes. Deliverables such as yearly designs or re-designs new technologies and product updates had to be more frequent and quicker to market; project teams were formed around each of the company's product lines and given a mandate to maintain market competitiveness.

MegaTech projects were charactiised by the following properties:

a. Using projects as the building blocks in the design and execution of the organisations strategies thereby realising the companies short and long term goals.

b. Through yearly re-designs the projects were responsible for producing newer, improved products and services. Because they complement traditional processes, MegaTech used it as a vehicle for going beyond conventional activities.

c. Projects were used as a change management tool to make alterations in the way they do daily activities.

d. There were a lot of internal organisation collaborations by bringing people from various departments across the company e.g. the combination of engineering, finance and marketing.

e. Traditional management functions such as planning, organizing, directing and control were applied to all MegaTech projects.

f. The principle outcome was customer satisfaction within the constraints of cost, technical and schedule objectives.

The successes of MegaTech project were defined by the four criterions of:

a. Time: project were constrained in by the specified time in which they were to be completed

b. Cost: all projects were to operate within budget in order to use resources efficiently.

c. Performance: all projects were developed in order to meet some initially specified and determined technical specifications.

d. Client acceptance: because the client was a key variable, projects were acceptable to the customers intended.

2. What elements of the marketplace in which MegaTech operates led the firm to believe that project management would improve its operations?

Project management offers MegaTech a number of practical competitive advantages, including the ability to be both effective in the market