A Trophy Project

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2. The Trophy project has shown signs of lack of corporate strategy. The stated organisation needs to look at its strategy in all of the aspects before they take on any project. Management needs to ensure that they are strategically aligned. No project will survive or be successful if it is not aligned with the strategy of the organisation and properly evaluated, communicated and supported by management.

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The Leadership of the organisation gave assistant project manager Reichart, without doing proper vision, mission, business case and strategy analysis. From the presented case, the mentioned organisation uses bureaucratic leadership systems rather than the learning organisation leadership systems. According to Steyn and Schmikl (2010: 1), states that “managing organisations in the new economy provides the integrative implementation link between corporate strategy, business unit strategy and operations strategy”

they did not work on any project related activities. This indicates that none of the strategies stated above were linked, hence the bureaucratic leadership system. The author puts much emphasis on the organisation strategy, due to the fact that it was lacking from the stated case, hence lack of direction from everyone in the organisation. Organisational strategies in corporate operations are essential for long-term goals and the ongoing success of enterprise options. The organisational strategy determines the outcome a business wants to see and provides a plan for making that happen. Without strategy the organisation might as well close its doors because they will never get to their destiny like the Titanic, they will hit an iceberg and sink.

There are three integrative pillars to manage strategy change that the organisation should consider. See figure 1 below.

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Figure 1: The three integrative pillars to manage (source: adapted from Harvey and brown, 2011:1)

- Behavioural strategy states that management must bring change in attitude and behaviour through vision, mission and value systems. On the trophy project there was nowhere where leadership communicated the vision and mission, business case and strategy of the organisation or how does the project fit into the organisation strategy to the employees of the organisation. That is why no one took the project seriously.

- Structural strategy change identifies the organisations structures that are needed in order to meet the requirements of the projects. The organisation in question should have evaluated the consequences of taking the Trophy project and see what structural changes are needed. Resources that they allocated were not coping with the project as stated. According to Steyn and Schmikl (2010: 89) there are different structures that they can use depending on their core business. These are non-project driven, project driven and hybrid structure.

- Operational strategy change brings about change in the everyday operations of the organisation in order to create new processes that will accommodate the new change or in this case the new project.

According to Steyn and Schmikl (2010:1), he states that “having a strategy focus is about positioning the organisation in the market environment to insure that it adds value to society and itself in a responsible and ethical manner. Leading and building on the strength of human capital means having a solid understanding of people and their relationships and building their careers based on their cognitive and conative talents they possess”. Looking at the trophy project, management gave the assistant project manager Reichart the project without even going through the process of verifying if his suitable to lead a project of this nature and capacity.

- The Trophy project lacks programme management and project management principles. The project manager was given a chance to state his worries with regards to the project and after the review meeting he found himself reporting to the operations manager. Should management want the trophy project to be successful they should consider having a project manager reporting to the project office. Steyn and Schmikl, 2010: 179), states that “programme management best provides systemic communication, coordination and integration of capabilities, while the balance score card best provides capabilities for communicating clear strategy and linking it to all levels of the organisation”. Even after the project manager was reporting to the operations manager nothing changed. Management did not help the situation since operations handles the everyday standard operations of the organisation. They are not equipped to deal with projects which are normally specialised functions dedicated and producing a single product at the agreed date. Project and programme management has great tools and techniques on managing the progress of the project.

There was also an evident lack of project planning, monitoring and control. This demonstrates poor project management skills of Reichart. The Trophy Project was one year behind schedule and over budget. This would not have been the case if proper project planning tools and techniques were in place. Reichart should have developed a detailed project plan and project charter. This would have made every person’s role and responsibilities that was working on the project clear from the very beginning. Project goals and objectives would have been clearly stated as well as the scope of work, budget, resource allocation, project risks, procurement items and project schedule. A detailed project schedule should have been done with tools like the Gantt chart used for scheduling and regular monitoring and control. If Reichart had also done a proper work breakdown structure and broke it down into work packages, each work package and activity could have been allocated to the right team member. There would have been no confusion and the project would have had a positive start. Reichart should have also developed a detailed network diagram to see which activities fell on the critical path and monitored those activities very closely. If this had been done, there would not have been any budget or scheduling issues

Another issue facing this organisation is that there was no Programme Management office that was set up. This led to the roles and responsibilities not being clearly understood, poor staff allocation to the project, no project prioritisation, lack of strategic direction, conflict between Reichart and functional managers and poor communication. Another function of programme management is to first analyse the business cases of the organisation and then develop