Project Management Assignment: How The Project Outcomes Are Influenced By Organizational Environment?

Question

Task: Prepare a project management assignment examining to what extent can the outcome of a project be influenced by the environment in which it is conceived and realized?

Answer

Introduction
The present report on Project management assignment deals with the various aspects of Project management which is considered as one of the practices to initiate, plan, execute, monitor and close teamwork to attain goals and meet the criteria at the period. It had been analyzed that some of the projects succeed while most of the projects fails which is because of various potential determinants. Although each of the projects is executed to accomplish some outcomes, but due to various factors, the outcomes of the project are influenced. The study covered in this Project management assignment outlines various factors that influence the project outcomes such as lack of financial budget, shortage of time, lack of employees, etc. However, it is interesting to examine that the environment in which the project is being executed also possesses an influence on the project’s consequence. The environment in which business organization executes is very complex which has a major effect on the organization. The environment tries to shape the outlook of the organization and attain project goals by placing the constraints. The organization’s success and survival have its dependency on the appropriate adoption of the environment. It is essential for the upper level management of the organization to recognize opportunities and threats of the environment as it has a major impact on organizational activities. The organizational environment where the project is executed possesses a major influence on the project’s consequence (Guiney, 2009). This study examined in the Project management assignment will analyze how the outcomes of the projects are influenced by the environment in which it is conceived, as well as realized wherein the organizational environment is taken into consideration.

Concept of Project
As per Parsons (2016), it is noted in this Project management assignment that project is the unique process that possesses coordinated as well as controlled activities with starting and finishing dates that are undertaken to attain objectives with a specific requirement. Projects are unique and possess unknown elements which even create risk. It is formed to solve the issues and take advantage of the opportunities. The project has definite objectives to attain. It requires various sets of resources and even involves uncertainty and needs cross-functional teams with interdisciplinary approaches. The project could be range from simple to complex and could be managed either by one person or by hundreds. It is described and delegated by executives and managers wherein they go over expectations and manage the logistics. There are different projects wherein deadlines or time limitations are given. As per the information provided in the Project management assignment, each of the projects passes through various phases of the life cycle from conception to completion. There are typically four phases in each of the projects which include conceptualization, planning, execution and termination (Quick & Nelson, 2017). It is analyzed that good project productivity could be attained when the team breaks its projects in individual tasks to manage accountability and make the utilization of the team powers.

Discuss the concept of project management in the context of Project management assignment.
Project management is the usage of experience, tools, abilities, and methods in the project events to satisfy the requirement of the projects. It is a distinct management area which helps in project handling. Project management has three characteristics that distinguish it from other management forms, which include project manager, project management system and project team. The project management system possesses organizational structure, decision making, information processing and procedure to facilitate horizontal and vertical elements of the project organization. The findings obtained in the Project management assignment signify that the project management approach assists in handling costly, complex and risky assignments through interdisciplinary approaches. This approach assists in handling assignments and projects in a particular time frame (Parsons, 2016). Project management is highly essential as it ensures what is delivered is right or wrong and will also deliver value against the opportunity of business.

Project management consists of planning and organization of resources of a company to attain specific tasks, duty towards completion. There are many types of project management, which include waterfall project management, Agile project management, and lean project management. The core components of project management are to prepare the business case to justify the investment as well as describe the motive why projects are essential. Project management manages risks, issues, and changes in projects and manage project budget. It helps in maintaining communication with project organization as well as stakeholders. It develops and implements management plans for the projects and direct the project delivery team.

Theory of Project Management
Project management is regarded as the function of introducing, planning, implementing, controlling, and finishing the performance of a team to accomplish certain objectives and to satisfy specific success criteria within the deadline. The concept of the project is given by the transformation perspective on processes. The readings obtained to develop this Project management assignment illustrates that in this perspective, a project is regarded as a conversion of inputs to outputs. There are a variety of codes, through which a project is managed. These codes recommend, for instance, decomposing the entire conversion hierarchically into minor changes, activities and reducing the expenses of every function independently (Koskela & Howell, 2002).

The understanding of management in this context of Project management assignment is subject to three concepts, which are managed as a planning concept, the transmitting concept, and the thermostat concept. In management at the planning concept, supervision at the functional level is observed to contain formation, review, and application of project plans. This strategy to administration observes a robust fundamental relationship between activities of management and the consequences of the project organization. The transmitting concept considers that strategic activities can be implemented by an announcement of the beginning of the job to the project organizer. The thermostat concept is the cybernetic concept of management control that contains certain components, which are standard of performance, productivity, the difference between standard and measured value, and correction of the procedure (Wideman, 2001).

The Project management assignment also sheds light on the fundamental theoretical basis of project management that has been assessed by four bases of proof, which are credibility and constancy of theory, experiential rationality, competing for ideas, and substitute methods based on competing concepts (Koskela & Howell, 2002). Project management has three types of objectives. Firstly, the objective of obtaining planned products generate by in common. Secondly, there are inner objectives, for instance, cost reduction and degree of usage. Thirdly, there are external objectives associated with the requirements of the customer, such as quality, reliability, and elasticity — a plain concept of project management acts as several functions. Based on the theory, instruments for evaluating, designing and controlling can be created (Koskela, 2002). Based on PMBOK, projects are composed of two types of procedures, which are project management procedure and project-based procedure (which stipulate and make the project).

PMBOK is the beginning point of the renovation of the concept of project management. Based on Turner (2003), project scope management is the raison deter of project management. He describes the objective of scope management as a proper and satisfactory level of work is conducted, unnecessary activities are avoided, and the activities conducted to provide the mentioned objective. From a theoretic perspective, he states that project management is regarding management activities. The project activities can be achieved through decomposing the whole tasks into smaller pieces of work, which are termed functions. Certainly, the assessment of PMBOK discloses that functions and activities are the units of evaluation in the core procedure of project management, such as scope management, time management, and expenditure management and that their managerial control is integrated. This is also agreed by the explanation of Morris (2004) who stated project management as follows:

Concept of Organizational Environment and its types
The Project management assignment examines the words of Orji (2010) that environment is the wholesome surrounding of the organization in a wider concept. It is defined as all the conditions, circumstances, and situations which affect the development of the whole organization. It is seen that each organization possess some goal and responsibilities linked with the environment. The business environment is termed as one of the complex environments which demote both internal and external environmental factors that have its influence on the organizational activities and even on the decision making. Each organization either business or non-business possesses its environment. The organizational environment is ever-changing and dynamic. Moreover, the changes are so steady that each of the professionals of the organization needs to be ready to face the environment change.

Types of environment
The study outlined in the Project management assignment discussed about the two types of environment, namely the external environment and the internal environment.

Internal environment: The Internal environment possess the forces or surrounding within the organizational boundary like physical resources, financial assets, information resources, technological resources, organizational culture, goodwill of organization, etc. The internal environment possesses everything which is in the boundary of the organization. This environment portrays the in-house situations of the organization wherein organizations possess full control over the situations and could directly control the internal environment (Orji, 2010).

External environment: External environment are the factors outside of the organization. The organization doesn’t have any control over the external environment and generally seen affecting all the organizations. Customers, competitors, suppliers, labor, agencies, financial firms come under the external environment. The elements which exist outside the organizational boundary possess the potential to affect the organization and need to be monitored carefully. The external environment is of two types, which include the direct and indirect environment. The direct environment is a factor that directly affects the organization's performance and operations like customers, regulations, competitors, etc. The indirect environment, on the other hand, influences the surrounding which includes political, technological, economic, social, environmental and legal dimensions. Each of these factors has major effects on organizational performance and other activities (Quick & Nelson, 2017).

Factors of organizational environment
According to Johnson (2010), it has been noted in this project management assignment that there are various factors of organizational environment, but material and ethical aspects and psychological factors are the major factors. It is observed that material and ethical aspects for the organizational setting are known as the furthest attracting force of human beings to attain certain behaviors. Incentives are the rewards that influence the behavior of the employees, whereas material factors also satisfy the material needs of the individuals and make them satisfy. It can be stated that if the material and morale need of the employees are fulfilled, that organizational environment is positive, and thus, organizational performance is accelerated, and success of the project could be attained (Johnson, 2010). The psychological factors for organizational environment related to the willingness of individuals to attain results to obtain social status. Psychological factors like possession, struggle, power, needs for security must be fulfilled by the organization to attain desired outcomes of the projects.

Effect of Environment of Project Outcomes
The notion of environmental aspects in a project is much more than general, mentioning every circumstance surrounding the project throughout its implementation. The environmental aspects are situations that are outside the direct control of the project team member and that impact positively or adversely on the project consequences. As an orientation to the key environmental factors that can influence the outcome of project management can be categorized into three organizational groups human resources and technologies.

What are the internal environmental factors in this context of Project management assignment? 
Organizational factors: Organizational factors comprise the organizational culture, structure, and governance. Apart from that other organizational factors, which are intrinsic in the organization, are:

• Mutual mission, vision, standards, principles, and prospects of people in the organization
• Accessibility and geographic spreading of services, assets, infrastructure and materials
• Inner standards, strategies, methods, and processes (ITM Platform, 2015)

Understanding the above factors can help to avoid irreconcilability between the project and the organization itself.

Human resources: The study examined in the Project management assignment mentions that human resource is a vital organizational environmental factor, which can impact project outcomes as they are the ones who will execute the project. The key human resource factors which can impact on the project are:

• Abilities and knowledge of the project team members
• The motivation of the project team members
• Insight of leadership, hierarchical structure and authoritative relationships between the manager and the team members
• Administrative risk acceptance attitudes
• Project and organizational stakeholders

External environmental factors
Government and industry-standard: As per the research carried on Project management assignment, the government and industry standards have a direct impact on the project. These are certain conditions that are beyond the control of the organization. In developing any product, whether construction or technological, they should be compliant with the industry standards. These standards impact on the project scope and are considered as environmental factors (Opara & et al., 2017). 

Political environment: Political environment is very important for the project. The political environment of the respective nation, where the project is being implemented, can impact aspects like procurement, construction, and management of human resources among other activities.

Marketplace situations: Marketplace situations also impact on project management outcome. For instance, if the project is operated in a market, which is having an economic slowdown or recession, this will impact a budget of the project. As a result, it will affect the return obtained from the project (Asian Development Bank, 2007). 

Economic environment: Economy is another environmental factor mentioned in this Project management assignment which impacts on the project outcome. In bad economic conditions, even a well-managed organization can unable to survive. For example, if there is a high level of unemployment, people will spend less, and hence, it will reduce the demand for the product that is being produced by the project.

Competition: Competition is an important corporate environmental factor impact on project outcomes. Unless the project organization performs in a monopoly market, it always requires dealing with competitors, who will strive to provide better products. Established companies and experienced organizations in a similar segment can generate competition for the project to be completed within a certain budget or certain quality (Wideman, 2001). Furthermore, the findings obtained in the Project management assignment also illustrates that new organizations can also compete against the established company and try to impact the project outcomes by stealing a portion of the market.

Customer and suppliers: Apart from the internal human resources of the organization, the customers and suppliers in most of the conditions are the most important people that the project organization should deal with. Suppliers can have a substantial influence on the budget and quality of the project outcomes. The power of a given supplier is subject to the scarcity of its raw materials and services, and hence its influences on the probability of negotiation. On the other hand, the power of customers is subject to the fact that they are free to select between any organizations. Therefore, their choices have an impact on the outcomes of project management.

Technological: Finally, there are certain technological and environmental factors outlined in the Project management assignment which can impact on the project outcomes such as:

• Operational environments and organizational authorization structures
• The communication system in the project organization
• Accessible databases
• Project management information system

These technical aspects can impact the project management effectiveness inside the organization and hence, the outcomes of project activities. 

Conclusion
In project management, the organization can control those environmental factors which are closer and more directly associated with the inner environment. It is hard to impact the general factors which are external to the organization. Hence, from the overall analysis provided in the Project management assignment, it can be concluded that every organization must understand which of the inner environmental aspects act as restricting conditions and accordingly develop strategies to mitigate them. In every situation, project manager requires to be conscious regarding the environmental factors and function accordingly, comprising the project threats, over which the project organization cannot imply any control; and communicating to the team members about the significance of being watchful regarding the signals indicating the appearance of the threat of changes in environmental situations. A project manager is liable for notifying the environmental issues affecting the project outcomes. Every project exists for an objective associating to and within the adjacent environment in which it is considered and realized. Therefore, project management activities must be reactive to the environment by enhancing the advantages, as far as possible, to every stakeholder and reducing the negative effects through thoughtful mitigation.

References
Asian Development Bank (2007). Analyzing the Project Environment. Project management assignment 13th ADB Regional Seminar MS, Manila, Philippines.

Guiney, A (2009). Information Technology Project Management – Team Building for Project Success. DBA Thesis, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University, Australia.

ITM Platform (2015). Corporate environmental factors that affect project management. [Online] available at: https://www.itmplatform.com/en/blog/corporate-environmental-factors-that-affect-project-management/ [Accessed 26 October 2019].

Johnson, F.B. (2010). Examining the Organizational Culture and Organizational Performance Link Leadership and Organization Development. Journal of management, 16(5), 20-38.

Koskela, L. & Howell, G. (2002). The Theory of Project Management: Explanation to Novel Methods. Proceedings IGLC-10, Aug 1-11.

Koskela, L. (2002). The underlying theory of project management is obsolete. [Online] Available at: https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/underlying-theory-project-management-obsolete-8971 [Accessed 26 October 2019].

Morris, P. (2004). The Management of Projects. London: Thomas Telford.

Opara, M. & et. al. (2017). Effects of the institutional environment on public-private partnership (P3) projects: Evidence from Canada. Project management assignment Accounting Forum, 1-19.

Orji, P. C. (2010). Impact of Organization Culture on Organizational Performance. Journal of management Account Research, 5(10), 84- 123.

Parsons, V. S. (2016). Project management assignment Project Performance: How to Access the Early Stages. Engineering Management Journal, 18(4), 11-15.

Quick, J. C. & Nelson, D. L. (2017). Principles of Organizational Behavior – Realities and Challenges (6^th ed.). South-Western, Cengage Learning.

Turner, J. R. (2003). The Handbook of Project-Based Management. London: McGraw-Hill.

Wideman, R. M. (2001). Managing the Project Environment. Project management assignment [Online] Available at: http://www.maxwideman.com/papers/projenviron/projenviron.pdf [Accessed 26 October 2019].