Analyze Implementation Issues to Anticipate Future Opportunities
Management is a system of a great number of functions. The high level control systems of the economy causes the situation when these management functions are isolated from each other and made by professionals. Planning is the development and adaptation of the plan, including foresight studies, specification and description of the object of economic activity for the near and distant future. Planning is a natural and integral part of management. It can be defined as the ability to anticipate the goals of the organization, the results of its operations, and resources required to achieve certain goals. In conditions of modern management, planning is considered as prediction and the anticipation the future opportunities (Mejia, Balkin, Cardy, 2008).
The researches show that planning helps to answer the following important questions: where the organization is at present (economic position of the company), what are the results of its operations and conditions, and with the help of which resources the goals of the organization can be achieved?
The management practice has shown that the use of planning and forecasting provides the following important benefits for any project:
– It reduces the risk of insolvency of the project;
– It makes possible to prepare for the future use of the favorable conditions;
– It clarifies the problems;
– It encourages managers to implement the taken decisions;
– It allows to improve the coordination within the organization;
– It creates the preconditions for improving the educational training of managers;
– It increases the possibilities to provide the organization of the project team with the necessary information;
– It contributes to a more efficient allocation of the project resources;
– It improves the control of the project.
Therefore, to avoid the risk of a sudden change in market prices for supplies/labor, as well as of the failure of the first project, it is necessary to remember that the process of the planning and anticipation the future opportunities consists of the following steps:
– Identifying of the areas of the project;
– Identifying the needs of road users;
– Setting of the standards for road conditions, which means the need to characterize the levels of the service, provided by the project;
– Determination of the implementation strategies and guidelines to maintain the required level of service;
– The development and further prediction.
Forecasting is not limited by the attempts to predict the details of the future (although in some cases it is essential). Forecaster comes from the dialectical determination of future events. Only with this approach the prediction and anticipation the future opportunities can be effectively used to select the most likely or the most desirable way of the project ruling, as well as to select the best option to justify the purpose, design, program, project, general solutions of the project. The forecasts should precede plans including an assessment of the project and the consequences of execution (or default) of plans, as well as it should cover everything that does not lend to planning, decision. They can include essentially any period of time. Both the forecast and plan are different with the ways of manipulating information about the future (Mejia, Balkin, Cardy, 2008).
The probabilistic description of a possibility or desirability of the project is a forecast. Policy decision regarding measures to achieve the possible, desirable is considered as the plan. The forecast and plan can be developed independently of each other. However, to make the effective and optimal plan, it must be preceded by the forecast, which should be continuous (Witzel, 2003).
In order to avoid risks, it is necessary to make the searching and normative forecast. The searching prognosis is a definition of possible states of the phenomenon in the future. It refers to a conditional extension to the future development trends of the phenomenon in the past and the present by abstracting from the possible solutions, the actions on the basis of which can radically change the trends are, in some cases, self-fulfillment, or self-destruction of the forecast. This forecast answers the question: what is likely to happen within the current trends? Normative forecast is the identifying of the ways and time frames for achieving the possible states of the project, taken as a goal. It refers to the prediction of achieving the desired state based on pre-defined rules, ideals, incentives, goals. The forecast answers the question concerning in what ways it is possible to achieve the desired goal of the project? (Witzel, 2003).
The basis of planning and forecasting, as well as the basis for anticipation the future opportunities of the proper project should lie through the following principles:
1) The principle of reasonableness of the goals and objectives of the project is identified as the most important goals. The goal is a very important component of the motivation to avoid the risk among the availability of workers;
2) The principle of systematic means that planning is a system of plans and covers all areas of the project;
3) The scientific principle requires consideration of the prospects of scientific research and technological development and application of science-based progressive norms and standards;
4) The principle of the continuity reflects a combination of current and future planning;
5) The principle of the balanced plan indicates the need for the quantitative correspondence between related sections and indicators of the plan between resource requirements and availability of the project;
6) The principle of prescriptive, according to which the plan becomes law to all parts of the project team after the approval of the head of the project management team.
Moreover, the manager should not forgot that the main purpose of the project manager is to achieve the project objectives. If we talk about the choosing of methods to improve the quality of work for achieving project goals, as well as about the planning and anticipation the future opportunities, we should also talk about the power or motivation. The coercive method leads not to the harmonization of the goals and interests of the company and its employees but only to strengthening of employee’s submission. However, the humility is not what the project manager needs for the efficiency. Almost all of the countries refuse to use this kind of managing. It is generally accepted that the power is an ineffective method of managing. Therefore, a motivational mechanism is actively developing in recent years. For many businesses, it is a determining factor for mobilization of the personnel to perform the tasks (Pritchard, Ashwood, 2008).
In many respects, the motivation of the project team is determined at the stage of selection of its members. There are some guidelines which could help at this stage to lay the foundation for the success of the project:
– A project manager should hire people who think that participating in the project would lead to the career and professional development;
– A project manager should check the criteria of professionalism of each candidate, because, indeed, the fact that someone is a good man does not mean that this person is an efficient worker.
Among the types of motivation, we could distinguish the following:
– Motivation reward;
– Bonuses for the results;
– Job security;
– The status raising;
– Professional development, acquisition of project experience;
– Satisfaction of the outcome.
The main objective of the motivation process is to maximize the results of the human resources use, which improve overall project performance and profitability of the company. Therefore, the motivation of participants has a direct effect on the success of the project.
After all, the team is composed of individuals, people with good education, good money and high self-esteem. Simple administration does not work in this case. Therefore, one of the main tasks of the project manager is to provide a proper motivational policy within the project team in order to maximize synergy, efficiency of the overall work, which, in turn, will lead to the successful completion of the project (Pritchard, Ashwood, 2008).
The main methods (mitigations methods) used in planning and anticipation the future opportunities, may include:
• Standard method – based on the progressive norms of resource use;
• Balance one – includes addressing alignment of resources with the sources of their formation (income) related to the entire system of material, financial and labor balances of the project;
• Extrapolation method – the trends of the project identified in the past are applicable to the future periods;
• Interpolation method – the project team sets the goal for the future and, based on it, determines the intermediate targets;
• Matrix method – the model building of relationships between the production units and the performance of their activities;
• Economic and mathematical modeling method.
Based on the above mentioned, it must be concluded that the anticipation the future opportunities of the project is provided in the form of goal-setting, planning, programming, design, ongoing management decisions and project team motivation. Goal setting is an ideal setting of the assumed results of operations. Planning is a projection into the future of human activity in order to achieve pre- defined objectives of the project, the transformation of information about future directions for the purposeful activity. Therefore, to avoid any risks, including the unforeseen risk situations during the project’s progress the manager should remember the proper principles of the project planning and the anticipation the future opportunities of the project.
References
Mejia, L., Balkin, D. & Cardy, R. (2008). Management: People, performance, change. Boston: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
R. Pritchard & E. Ashwood (2008). Managing motivation. New York: Taylor & Francis Group.
Schmid, Bernhard., & Adams, Jonathan.(2008). Motivation in project management: The project manager’s perspective. Project Management Journal, 39 (2).
Young-Hoon Kwak. (2005). The story of managing projects an interdisciplinary approach. Westport, Conn: Praeger Publishers.
Witzel, M. (2003). Fifty key figures in management. New York: Routledge.
