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Assignment 1: Project Management
I am in Ireland for the summer working at a company based out of called EMC. They are a computer disk storage company “Where Information Lives”. They make all kinds of products involved with storing and managing large digital databases, for companies such as MasterCard or American Airlines. Most people know them because of the work they do with the Red Sox and the big banners that are up at Fenway Park promoting the company. I work in the customer service for a project manager this summer. I would love to talk about what I am doing but EMC wouldn’t be happy with me posting an explanation about my project online. So I am going to write a little bit about the actual process project management. This interests me because it is something I might like to do when I get out of college and the skills can be used in lots of different settings.
What I learned today at the office is about human resource management. I will stick with the basics about what a project manager is because there is a lot to it and I could write 5 pages. Human resource management is about organizing and managing a team of people throughout a projects life cycle. This involves planning what a team needs to complete the project and getting the right people for the job. However first what does it take to be a project manager? Some of the key characteristics are being honest, decisive, team oriented, respectful and positive. Stake holders in projects need people to be honest about how the project is doing and able to make decisions about the project without having to bother the stake holders about every little problem. Obviously a project manager needs to be team oriented because they are working with many different people to try and complete the project. Respect and positive are important also because a project manager has to be able to use everyone on the team even if they are not the easy to work with but are needed because of their expertise.
Leadership is what this all comes down to. This is different than a normal manger. The project manager has to work with people from all over a company and maybe contract people to complete jobs that would not be worth hiring for. Most project managers have a set of abilities to run their team with. The ability to make requests of the team members, asking people to complete tasks much like a normal or functional manager would. They have the ability to fire or punish team members for the obvious reasons. They also have the ability to reward employees for doing a good job and completing tasks on time. Referent power is also something that a project manger gets but this is respect that is gained over time. This can open the door for more flexibility in the work place because the project manager would be known as a honest, reliable team player.
This is just some of the things I have learned about the way EMC uses project managers but it is only the tip if the iceberg. Human resource management extends into how to set up communication, organizational structure and team development. This is just what is needed from project managers. My manager is a project manager. Unlike the people on his team I work much closer to him helping out with his work. He is trying to teach me about the basics of project management by bringing me to lots of meetings and putting together power points to release the upper management reporting on his project. So far it has been a valuable experience.
