Summary
This critical appraisal seeks to come up with a methodical assessment of the Sodor Oil Terminal, Planning and Construction Project. It involves an analysis of the project and different aspects of the management approach employed by my team (5) from start to finish. The appraisal approaches the exercise from the standpoint that the requisite project management tools and techniques were applied in all phases of the project. The critical appraisal is based on principles and ideas gleaned from project management theories, journals, case studies and real life experiences. In the end, the evaluation concluded that the Sodor Oil Project followed relevant project management tools and techniques and was overall well managed. The report on the project’s critical evaluation mainly draws supportive literature from journals associated with project management.
Introduction
Manzoor et al. (2011) concluded from an evaluation of real life experience and project management literature that project success is a virtually assured outcome if applicable project planning techniques and procedures are used accordingly. These tools and techniques include pertinent planning, effective communication, team work, monitoring and evaluation, exceptional problem-solving ability, change management abilities, delivery reviews, excellent implementation of project strategy, project reviews, milestone checklists, Gantt chart and scorecards among others (Baker and Day, 2006). That being the case, excellent management skills was absolutely paramount for the success of the Sodor Oil Project. At the end of the report, concluding remarks as well as recommendations on project management will be given. The MS Project Baseline Plan at the beginning and the closeout baseline plan are attached to the appendix.
CRITICAL REVIEW OF HOW THE TEAM WAS ORGANISED
The end goal of the Sodor Project was the construction of an Oil Terminal on the isle of Sodor near Kirk, Ronan.
Team formation
The project began with the selection of a five-member team, scheduling of biweekly meetings and set the team’s goals as designing, planning and construction of the terminal.
The frequent meetings were instrumental in enhancing team building as well as in setting specific objectives to guide the team to achieve the intended goals. During the meetings, the team discussed and highlighted the importance of effective communication, team roles, interpersonal leadership skills, and commitment to the project goals. Huang (2013) describes shared leadership as a collective leadership technique which is effective in promoting commitment of members. Kramer and Crespy (2011) concur with this view, arguing that shared leadership enhances a collaborative approach on members of the group. The team duly agreed to follow this approach in implementation of the project. Under this approach, every group member was afforded a chance to exercise leadership over other members of the group periodically and on specific tasks. Wi et al. (2009) cited that, choosing a competent leader for a position of managing a team and having competent members collaborate as a team is a key to accomplishment in a project. For the purpose of precise control, where each member was aware of their specific role, we chose to apply the team role theory as put forward by Belbin (Aritzeta, Swailes, and Senior, 2007). The approach also helped in selecting a manager and assigning specific roles to each member based on their strengths, weaknesses and professional expertise. The team was broken up into five roles; project manager, IT assistant, whom assisted in updating the project plan, assistant project manager, who performed the minute taking, vendor selection investigator, who took the task of selecting the vendor and account/financial officer, produced the cost model for the sodor project. The core role of the manager was that of supervising the project as a whole as well as coordinating and assigning duty to other members of the team (Baker and Day, 2006).
Team Communication
With the absolute need for effective communication and project success in mind as laid out by Ramsing (2009), the team devised a strategy on achieving effective communication throughout the life-cycle of the project; effective communication is necessary for each project as it helps in setting out and achieving outlined objectives in the foreseen timeline. Effective communication and information management are two useful tools in the designing of project management structures (Mazzei and Ravazzani, 2011). In view of this fact, the team decided to apply a variety of communication channels, including phone calls, whatsapp messaging app and email among others. Google Mail and Drop-box were picked as the platforms of choice in sharing project materials, and this was expected to help us to follow the projected project milestones and critical path.
Team Motivation
It is regularly to team member’s greatest advantage to join a project team in order to complete their tasks in a more proficient way (Zhu, Huang and Contractor, 2013). For example, in a situation whereby a team member with less experience and low skills would bring about a high cost; taking quite a long time or a high risk of inability to finish a task by themselves. In this way, the team member has more utilitarian needs to collaborate with other team members to accomplish assigned tasks. In addition, by working in teams and watching other team members carry out tasks, low-skilled members might learn from highly-skilled team members and enhance their skills. However, few members of the team had little or less skills in utilising the MS project tool during the Sodor project plan, hence we adopted a mutual interest and collective action to motivate the team for effective collaborative work.
