General Management System

Discuss about the Project Management And Portfolio Management.

The project management and portfolio management is an important part for managing all the projects and the processes in the organization.  There are various methodologies related to the project management. Apart from application of the various technologies, there are various system thinking tools and  the knowledge management present in the implementation of the project management. Both the project management and the portfolio management is associated with the project management, however they are different in nature (Kerzner and Kerzner 2017). The portfolio indicates managing of the variety of the projects while the project management indicates the managing of the process of a particular project. The general system management is associated with different factors like system thinking, management risks. The main objective of this paper is to discuss about the various aspects of the project management along with the impacts of those factors on the successful management of the project. These factors associated with the project management are discussed on the basis of the case study of Deep water horizon and the Texas city. The primary purpose of this paper is understand about the system thinking tools and the secondary purpose of this paper is to develop the connection between the various factors of the project management.

In order to discuss the effectiveness of the different components of the project management, the importance of the factors has been discussed on the basis of the case study related to the deep water horizon.

General management system: The general management system indicate sthe processes those are needed to be followed in the organization for then successful compilation of the projects. The compilation of those projects should ensure that the outcome of the project is meeting all the requirements (Gonçalves et al.2017). A general management principal has four aspects-plan, do, check, act.  The successful running of the organization depends on the right management system. The successful business process indicates execution of the right business plans and the project plans for the compilation of the business objective.

On the context of the deep water horizon failure , it can be said that this case can be regarded as the classical example of the failure of the business process. Deep Water horizon oil spill is regarded as the one of the worst disaster . The incident happened in 2010 at the Gulf of Mexico. The centre of the incident was the British Petroleum operated Macondo Prospect. The investigation indicated that the improper management of the infrastructure and the massive cost cutting in the production system are the cause of the incident. Several  investigation partners have blamed the British Petroleum and its associate partners for not providing the proper safety management in the organization. Most of the investigations concluded that the spill has caused for the systematic root cause and due to the absence of the significant reform from both sides of the British Petroleum and the government policies.

Organizational Structure and Culture

The cost cutting and the absence of reformation in the system along with the improper government policy are the result of the poor management system. The British Petroleum (BP) needed to implement the proper management system so that the proper management of the system infrastructure could be implemented in the organization.

Organization structure, forms and culture: The working culture of the organization and the management structure of the organization play an significant role in the business process of the organization. The hierarchy of the organization indicate sthe effectiveness of the flow of communication and information in the organization (Weick 2017). On the other hand maintain the proper hierarchy in the organization will help the employees to reach to the higher authority in case if there is any need. This can help the managers to k now amount the situation of the organization. In case, if any misconduct happens in the organization the managers can be aware of that and can take necessary steps.

The working culture and the working environment of the organization have the significant effect on the productivity of the employees. The positive working environment helps the employees to work in a creative and effective way. On the other hand the negative working environment does not enhance the job satisfactions of the employees.

It has been seen that there were flaws in the management of the organization in case of deep water horizon. The communication between the onshore engineers and the managers of the organization was not proper (Heagney 2016). The engineers at the organization were aware about the poor cement quality of the oil tankers , however, they did not I form this flaw to the higher  authority of the organization (Forth et al. 2017). The company had decided to cut the cost of the producing the products. This cutting of the cost for the process had lead to the degradation of the safety. The poor decision of granting the insufficient resources reflects the poor management of the organization.

Engineering risk and management of the risks:  Each system and the process in the organization are associated  with certain risks . The risks can be of various types like failure of the system,  not delivering the right outcome by the project, improper execution of the planning. One of the major risks is the security risk for the organization. The system failure and the data breaches can be considered as the examples of the risks in the organization. The risk associated with the project management is scope creep. The scope creep defines the change of the requirement in the middle of the development of the project. 

Engineering Risk and Risk Management

The engineering risks includes the failure of the system and the malfunction of the system. The risks associated with the system failure cannot remove completely, however the risks can be mitigated using proper safety measures.  In case of deep water horizon oil spill, the risks associated with the incident was overlooked by the managers and the engineers. The defect in the  cement was not informed to the managers and engineers at the onshore overlooked the matter. There was no step taken for the mitigation of the risk associated with the process carried out by the BP.

Portfolio management: The portfolio management is an important thing for managing the business process. The portfolio management is different from the project management in some cases. The management of the portfolio refers to the managing of the diverse projects. On the other hand the management of the project refers to the managing of the processes required for the compilation of the project.

The organization may have the different projects running for different purpose. Managing the diverse background of the projects the portfolio management is required for managing of those projects.

In case of deep water horizon , the management of the portfolio was not done properly. The BP Deep water horizon had various projects , and the successful compilation of those projects were responsible for the conduction of the business process n the organization. The incident of the oil spill indicates that the portfolio management in the organization was not done in a proper way.

Business value: While providing services to the clients and the stakeholders of the organization , the company should try to provide the value driven service (Schwalbe 2015) .  The service can be regarded as the value driven service if the outcome of the service meets all the requirements along with that it should deliver its objectives.

In case of deep water horizon the services provided by the BP was not value driven. The negligence in the government policy along with the absence of the safety in the process were the main causes of the incident, which was not desirable.

The managing of the portfolio is important for the organization as it supports the execution of the diverse projects. Generally management of the portfolio has five steps-

• Establishment
• Evaluation
• Setting the priority
• Selection and
• Management

Evaluation of the portfolio management is done for the analysis of the portfolio alignment towards the industry. The setting of the different priority is done on the basis of the importance of the project. Selection of the project is based on the priority set for the project and the final step of the portfolio management is managing the different projects.

Portfolio Management

The incident of the oil spill indicates there were no synchronization between the different project processes and that leads to the happening of the incident.

Organizational maturity: The organizational maturity denotes the level of understanding of the organization about the industry (Eastham et al. 2014). It is expected from the organization which has been in the industry for the long time to understand the business market and make the effective business that can deliver sustainable services to the stakeholders of the organization. The organizational maturity also indicates the good will of the company (Joye  2015). It can be expected from the organization which is in the industry for the long time to serve and deliver the projects in an effective way.

In case of deep water horizon , the organization associates was British Petroleum, which has a good reputation in the industry (Luiz,  Souza and Luiz  2017). The oil spill incident affected the good will of the company, as the industry did not expect such disaster from a well established organization.

The discussion of the regarding the various aspects of managing the processes in the business organization has been evaluated on the basis of the incident known as the deep water horizon case. The evaluation indicates the significance and the importance of maintaining the certain factors in the proper management of the process (Mesquida and Mas  2014). In case of managing of the project the project managers can take help form the different system thinking tools and the project management methodologies. The system thinking tools includes the analysis of the data and the market surveys (Karaman and Kurt 2015). Apart from that the project management methodologies will help to sets the guidelines for the successful development of the project. There are different advantages of the project management practice (Brioso 2015). The proper project management practice helps to contribute in the knowledge management and the proper decision making (Spudeit and Ferenhof 2017). The selection of the project management methodology is dependent on the requirements of the project and the types of the project. The approach of different project management methodologies are different (Chaves et al., 2016). However, in general each project management methodology has the five steps in the life cycle process- initialization, planning, execution, monitoring and controlling and closing of the project (Cheng, Malik and Sorooshian 2017). The initialization of the project includes the requirement gathering of the project. The clarity in the requirement gathering helps the project to deliver the right outcome and mitigate the scope creep of the project. In the planning phase then blue print of the project based in the requirements is done. The execution of the project is done on the basis of the planning. After the compilation of the project the monitoring of the performance is done. The project coems to an end in the closing phase of the project.

Business Value

The results of the absence of the project management has been seen in the deep water horizon disaster. In the large organization for managing the projects of diverse kinds can only be manageable through the proper monitoring and application of the project management principals.

Conclusion

The paper has discussed about the importance of the project management for managing the business process. In order to evaluate the significance of the aspects of the different project management technologies and the factors related to the project management technologies, the example of the deep water horizon is evaluated. The factors associated with the project management such as value of the business, evaluation of the risks associated with the process and the effect of the working culture and the management hierarchy of the organization on the project is evaluated on the basis of the disaster of the deep water horizon. It can be concluded form the discussion that the application of the project management and the factors associated with it are important for the successful compilation of the projects and the expand of the business.

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