Sample PPMP20009 Project Management Report

PPMP20009 Project Management Report

Your tasks include:

1. An introduction/problem statement. Remember your target audience is the senior management team at Kocom.

2. Propose two leadership styles that you believe would support the Lean transition and beyond.

3. Identify and propose four leadership competencies that you believe would bring out the best outcome for this transition and beyond.

4. Identify and propose four best practices that you believe will support lean leadership and help maintain the Lean systems after their implementation.

5. The PMI talent triangle describes skills that are seen to increase a project manager’s competence in three categories (see week 6 lecture slides). Select two skills from each category and demonstrate how each skill would support this transition.

6. Identify and propose five characteristics of agile self-directed teams that will help you deliver the Lean initiative successfully.

7. Propose two best quality control tools for Lean which could be implemented in various departments of Kocom that will improve their efficiency and quality. Provide specific examples on how the tools will be implemented.

8. Identify two risks during or after the Lean transition and elaborate their mitigation strategies.

9. A conclusion recommending a preferred approach to proceed with the Lean transition and beyond.

10. A brief account of the teamwork deployed in this assignment, listing three lessons you have learned as a team. To support your arguments a transcript of the final team meeting or a link to a recording of a ZOOM meeting should be included as appendix Which will be excluded from the word count.

Solution

Introduction

The paper will offer important strategies for Kocom to adopt lean transformation. In order to make it successful feasible and possible, the report for assignment help first will discuss two different leadership styles which would be supportive for the transition and retain the transition. In this context, leadership competencies even will be discussed to confirm best practices for lean leadership. Leadership style cannot be justified without the competency of a project manager (Zhou, Zhao, Tian, Zhang & Chen, 2018). Risk mitigation strategy even will be incorporated to conclude with the successful incorporation of lean management in the process. Finally, it will evaluate team activities to confirm the learning throughout.

Leadership Styles

Kocom is going to adopt lean management. Lean management is the approach for managing an organization in a way that one can confirm continuous improvement with a long-term approach for work which eventually identifies incremental small changes in the process to improve quality and efficiency, eliminating waste in the process. Considering the main characteristics of lean management, cooperation, collaboration, effective acknowledgment of the future requirements, and innovation are important to confirm effective justification of lean management in the process of Kocom. Considering the main objectives, a visionary leadership style would be much helpful (Zhou, Zhao, Tian, Zhang & Chen, 2018). Long-term addressing is an important consideration, thereby, visionary leadership can be helpful in offering long-term vision (Cadden, Millar, Treacy & Humphreys, 2020). It directs people towards shared common reasons for organizational betterment. The leadership style in the process confirms the development of the clear vision and as it incorporates the entire team in the process, thereby indirectly it addresses cooperative and collaborative organizational culture which is another important consideration for lean management. The attribute of clarifying the vision to everyone by 'whys' confirms long-term interest for the Kocom, it monitors performance and sets standards in the context of larger vision with the balanced positive and negative feedback for motivation. All referred attributes secures retention of lean management in a better way.

Another important leadership for lean management can be affiliative leadership as it helps to confirm harmony in the work culture by making a perfect connection with each other. Leadership directly addresses the communication, collaboration, cooperation confirming positive interaction to enhance team performance (Wachira, Karanja & Iravo, 2018). By emphasizing the personal needs of others, it recognizes opportunities to confirm positive feedback which is another motivational factor that leads the work culture towards betterment. By satisfying employee needs, indirectly it confirms effective addressing to the goals without putting any pressure on the workforce. Such type of leadership can encourage the workforce of Kocom to be involved in the work culture actively and spontaneously which eventually helps to attend and retain lean management in a better way (Leffingwell, 2021).

Leadership Competencies

Considering the leadership styles, it is important to have some leadership competencies to perfectly address the leadership styles accomplishing all objectives which are required for the organizational culture (Seemiller, 2018). The first and foremost consideration is having leadership courage. Leadership is a personal attribute, hence, without proper type of courage or leadership courage, no leadership style can properly be exercised in the organizational culture. A leader needs to be brave enough to take the right decision at the right time even if he needs to go against the majority. The competency eventually helps the leader to be confident enough to get in stuck with one thing as well as try new things as per requirements by being innovative to address all challenging situations in an organization. Another important leadership competency is communication. As per identified leadership styles, communication is important for both the leadership styles as effective communication confirms success for a leader. Communication is a two-way process of listening and speaking. Most of the time, people misinterpret communication, as only a way of speaking, however, smart ones always have the competency of effective listening skills to respect others with enough attention for the speaker (Realyvásquez-Vargas et al., 2018). It does not only confirm hearing whether it makes the other person feel that the leader is attentive and present to understand before comment. Effective communication immediately gets followed by building a relationship which is another important competency for an organization. Having a proper connection with each other with the proper type of communication, specifical communication between leader and the group is very important for which a leader needs to have a strong relationship with a person of the organization. With a better relationship or strong relationship, one can accomplish anything as empathetic attitude makes people much more convinced than a commanding tone. Finally, shaping the culture of the organization is another competency for a leader (Holweg & Maylor, 2018). An organization always goes through different types of changes where the leader is responsible to maintain the positivity of the organizational culture for which he needs to have the competency of shaping the culture even during any change in the process. A leader is responsible to confirm that whatever activities are there in the organizational culture are being maintained by dedicated employees who can manage the change of the process by the structured approach and better engagement with team members through communication integration with the leader (Seidel, Saurin, Marodin & Ribeiro, 2017).

Best Practices for Lean Leadership

Best practices for lean leadership need to be such practices that can exactly address the objectives of lean leadership i.e controlling quality, removing waste, innovative processes to confirm the continuous improvement of the organization (Bridges & Bridges, 2021). Hence, leadership needs to accommodate maintaining and acquiring new initiatives to confirm that innovative approaches are being taken for continuous improvement as well as the positivity of the organizational culture is even being retained. Best practices for the competency of leadership can be plan-do-check-act. Four interrelated processes confirm that a leader needs to have the competencies like planning, doing, checking, and acting. A leader needs to be a good planner to visualize objectives for the workforce which can be long-term (O'Connor, Hill, Kaya & Martin, 2019). Without effective planning, lean management cannot be accommodated with positivity, hence one needs to be supported with the competency of effective and efficient planning, so that he can assume the future requirements successfully and plan accordingly so that an organization like Kocom can confirm their strategies in a way that can address future changed requirements effortlessly and successfully.

Project Manager’s Competency Skills

Organizations often seek added skills in business intelligence as well as leadership with competencies so that the leaders can support every activity of the organization for directing longer-range strategic objectives. PMI talent triangle can be referred to as an ideal skill set which is the combination of strategic and business management expertise, leadership, and technical expertise with digital skills (Horváth, 2019). Kocom is an organization of communication devices, for which digital technologies are most important. Hence, technical skills are the most important skills for Kocom as per the industry type to confirm competitive advantage for it by making its products the best in the market with added features by innovative technologies. Technical expertise can be the only skill that can help to have technical excellence in the work culture. Thereby, from the category of technical skill, technological understanding and skills for effective implementation of the technologies are important to confirm success for an organization. From the leading concern, the most important skill for a project manager is effective communication. A project manager is responsible for different types of responsibilities for which he needs to have an effective relationship with every stakeholder for which communication plays a significant role (Horváth, 2019). A project manager is expected to have expertise in different types of communication skills like writing, facial, and body language to confirm effective communication in the process. A leader has a connection with both internal and external stakeholders, thereby, different types of communication skills are needed which eventually helps him to be a successful leader as the communication skill plays the most important role to satisfy all his job roles and responsibilities ("Styles of Leadership - avoid career-ending mistakes", 2021). Apart from communication in the leadership aspect, he is even expected to be an expert in motivational skills. An organization needs to have positivity in its structure to confirm development and betterment. Motivation is such a factor that helps the project manager to maintain and retain positivity with acquired strategies as per the requirement of the situation. A leader cannot be successful without efficiency in motivation. For the strategic and business management category, the project manager most importantly needs to be innovative. Innovation plays the key role for a business to confirm effective addressing of market requirements. The efficiency of a project manager in innovation skills can help an organization to have the best strategy management which not only helps to address the present goal of the organization, rather can confirm for addressing to future objectives or requirements of the market. Business management even includes some difficult situations where a project manager is expected to exercise negotiation skills ("5 leadership styles used in project management", 2021). Negotiation skill helps the project manager to choose the best alternative for the organization which eventually helps to support the transition in organizational culture. An organization when going to have a transition needs to have the support of technological knowledge as well as the skill of implementing the technological innovation in the process to have the best of the transition sustaining positivity (Smith & Jones, 2018). Without communication and motivation, such a type of technological involvement of transition cannot be addressed. Any project manager without innovation or negotiation cannot confirm strategic and business management which is most important during the transition of the organization as strategies eventually cannot help the transition due to its new requirements.

Agile Self-directed Teams and Their Impact

Five characteristics of self-directed teams are their self-driven attitude, trusting each other, decisions that are taken by employees or employees engaged in the decision-making process, high self-awareness, and strong communication (Doyle & Doyle, 2021). The agile self-directed team helps in addressing the betterment effortlessly and in a less time-consuming manner. A self-driven attitude or self-directed team helps to sustain a participative organizational culture where employees work by wish with maximum contribution and activation without any sort of comparison with eventually addresses improvement in the organizational culture (Yue, Men& Ferguson, 2019). On the other hand, the agile approach can be referred to as the iterative approach for project management or software development which helps the team for delivering value to the customers in a low time-consuming manner. It mainly objectifies teamwork in a small consumable direction without going for the 'Big Bang' launch. Hence the self-directed agile team directly addresses lean initiative by its five principles or approaches. A self-driven attitude due to active participation in the work culture helps to have a cooperative, collaborative organizational culture which eventually can address the common goal regularly in the process and thus it confirms better addressing to the waste removal from the organizational culture with one of the most important lean initiatives. As there is no compulsion on employees, hence, they try to remove waste to attain sustainability in terms of all resources specifically for time and budget to make the work culture more productive and thus lean initiative that addressed (Sinha & Matharu, 2019). For lean initiative, cooperation and collaboration in the work culture are very important to sustain continuous improvement. In an agile self-directed team, they connect effortlessly and without effective communication, they trust each other for satisfying the common goal. Such a type of team exercises the trust factor by strong and effective communication with each other (Yue, Men & Ferguson, 2019). Specific acknowledgment of each other and effective communication eventually help them to sustain that much trust factor that an organization can confirm continuous improvement in its work culture and eventually it gets ready for long term objective satisfying a condition of lean management (Tarjomefa.com, 2021). Such type of excellent work culture eventually helps the leaders to exercise their leadership style like visionary leadership style and affiliative leadership style in a better way as they are well aware of the objective and participate in the workforce wholeheartedly to offer better scopes for exercising the leadership confirming continuous improvement, waste removal, and long-term objective satisfaction in the process. Most importantly self-directed agile team takes an active part in the decision-making process which eventually initiates the belongingness of the workforce for the organization (Bach & Bach, 2021). The workforce in such teamwork culture does not only work as paid staff, rather as a contributor of the work culture, and thus they confirm the best satisfaction of the objectives of the organization which eventually justifies continuous improvement addressing to long-term objectives. The main lookout of lean management.

Quality Control Tools for Lean

To do quality control, it is important to sustain the organizational culture in a way that can opt for continuous improvement. Without the support of effective tools, such type of quality control, improvement cannot be accessed in organizational culture. Hence, it is important for Kocom to identify and exercise the quality control tools which can initiate quality and efficiency for lean management. The main principles for lean management are to identify value, map the value stream, create the flow, publish the pool, and continuously improve ("Competencies & Traits of a Lean Leader", 2021). It needs to have the support of technological excellence most, as it belongs to the communicative industry with the products like CCTV, smart home, intercom alarm, etc. It basically can help to outline the process to reach the potential customers by accommodating excellence. Technological excellence mostly depends on innovation. Innovation can be both positive and negative as it is a matter of proficiency and practice. Thereby, Kocom needs to have such type of tool support which can remove the waste to make lean manufacturing successful. In such context, FMEA (Failure Model and Effects Analysis) can be helpful as it would help the project manager or leaders to understand the negative consequences in the process to review the flow and anticipate to address the issues before being served to the customers before become severely crucial for the entire process (Anjalee, Rutter & Samaranayake, 2021). The tool directly would help Kocom to remove waste which is important for lean manufacturing influencing work indirectly to help to quality control as well as continuous improvement for the process.

Risks and Mitigation Strategies

In implementing lean initiatives or even after the process, Kocom can have several risk factors in its work culture due to the transition it has sustained. The most crucial respect it can have is wrong timing. Implementation of a new initiative for lean management needs to be in a proper time so that, it can only contain positivity for the work culture without acquiring negativity (Toledo, Gonzalez, Lizarelli & Pelegrino, 2019). To avoid such risk factors, the best way out is to do proper planning where effective communication, justified leadership styles, and skills are really important (Sinha & Matharu, 2019). Another important risk during or after the transition can be an improper human resource. Entirely lean management depends on the efficacy of human resources for all its accomplishment. If human resources would not be effective for such type of transition and without the help of an effective leadership style, then the entire work culture can be at stake ("9 Lean Leadership Practices to Get the Best Performance Out Of Your Team", 2021). To avoid the risk factor, Kocom needs to have efficient, experienced employees specifically successful leaders to confirm effective accomplishment of all the objectives.

Conclusion

The report has confirmed in-depth discussion for the transition of Kocom to adopt lean management which has successfully evaluated two leadership styles that can support the lean management for the senior management of Kocom. Leadership competencies are even evaluated where it has been seen that it needs to have such leaders who can objectify the model of plan-do-check-act to confirm the transition successfully. The competencies eventually help Kocom to secure the best leadership where communication would play a significant role. As per the discussion of the talent triangle, the project manager needs to have competencies over technological and leadership aspects to confirm better strategic and business management with the support of skills like communication, innovation, negotiation, acknowledgment of technological knowledge, etc. A self-directed team with their attributes can better sustain lean initiative confirming quality control with the help of the tools like FMEA analysis and affinity diagram. Time and resources can be respected for Kocom for the transition via effective planning and proper identification of human resources would be helpful.

Reflection and lessons learned

As per the discussion, the team needs to have effective communication, collaboration, negotiation, and decision-making skill to support all the stages of transition confirming the success of the project. Most importantly, the team needs to have innovation skills as long-term objectification cannot be done without innovation.

The team of Kocom for sustaining the lean transition successfully, needs to be efficient and effective and cooperative and collaborative. It even needs to have justified support of leadership with the help of affiliative or visionary leadership style having some important leadership skills to confirm cooperative and collaborative work culture for continuous improvement waste removal and most importantly the practice of innovation. The team needs to adopt a participative approach where the leader is expected to adopt a plan-do-check-act model when the leader does not only be a leader, rather a member of the team to confirm the transition where competency skills of the project manager like technological skills, negotiation, innovation, communication skills would help to sustain positive effect of the transition. The Kocom can have the best result by the agile self-directed team as such an active motivated team can directly address clean initiative without any sort of compulsion. Quality control tools like affinity diagram and FMEA analysis eventually help Kocom to confirm improvement as well as value creation where much lookout needs to be taken for identifying proper human resources and exact time to exercise a new approach for the lean transition in the work culture.

As per the discussion, three main lessons for working as a team are being effective communicators where speaking and listening both are important as it helps to be cooperative and collaborative which is a must for a team. Another important lesson is to have emotional intelligence and support of effective leadership to confirm the effective accomplishment of the project. Finally, in the present context, innovation is the most important aspect to exercise for any field.

References