Beijing EAPS Consulting Inc project planning implications and departmental perspectives

¶ … Beijing EAPS Consulting, Inc." After evaluating the case study the paper has described various learning from it. The case study has described a situation of BES and the problems that it was facing related to project planning and project management. The paper has analyzed the situation and offered solutions to the problems.

Implications of co conducting a project plan:

Conducting a project in itself isn't any easy task; there are a number of complications in the implementation stage. These issues are multiplied when there are two or more projects going on simultaneously. In the case of "Beijing EAPS Consulting, Inc.," Mr. Zhang and Ms. Song were involved in co conducting projects. Their relationship was a positive one since the beginning however they were facing some issues among themselves which was making it extremely hard for the whole team to work out. They were at the same level of business hierarchy and had similar authority to each other with their clashing attitudes it was hard for the employees to take orders. This was creating confusion in the employees. It was hard to decide for them that who is more powerful and who has the authority.

BEC was following a project management structure which was difficult for the employees to adapt to as they were not used to it, the departmental managers had the required skills and the expertise however they were unable to figure out their own authority and boundary. The project suffered because there was overlapping of duties and gaps in the project due to limited authority. However the departmental managers worked in tandem and the company saw a rise in the profits and the performance of the company was improving.

Although the performance of the company was improving by following the project management approach; yet there was a massive room for improvement. The relationship between the managers and the employees could have been held in a much better way to get better results out from them leading to higher profits. Co conducting of projects provided the company a great chance to improve the present structure and get better results.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Following are the strengths of the project plan:

Onsite training sessions: BEC provided training session to the customer onsite. The training sessions included employees, managers and customers which helped in creating unity amongst the top and low management.

Conducting Interviews: They conducted interviews of the employees in order to study their behaviors, needs and requirements in order to offer a better package to them and monitor their satisfaction patterns.

Recruitment: Recruitment was on the basis of the needs and requirements of the company and a lot of amount of budget was spent on recruitment and HR in order to get a better qualified staff which can perform the duties more efficiently.

Following are the weaknesses of the project plan:

Communication: There was a communication gap amongst the manager themselves and between the managers and employees which was creating a confusion leading to a decline in the overall performance of the project.

Managerial Responsibilities: There was confusion in the managerial responsibilities of the managers. Ms. Song and Mr. Zhang were having a personality clash which was not a concern of management but this clash was affecting the performance of the company leading to inefficient performance of the whole team.

Prioritization of tasks: It was hard for the employees to know what to do and when to do when there is a communication gap. There were overlapping duties and responsibilities which caused dissatisfaction and disagreements between the employees. They were not communicated clearly of their responsibilities and had no clue what to do and in which order to do.

Team Behavior

BES was facing major difficulties in creating more profits despite the number of opportunities that were provided to them. In order to tackle those issues they needed to restructure their procedures and operations. However any major transformation in the organization would not have been welcomed by the employees and the management as they were getting used to the project management structure that was employees. So what they needed was to fine tune their existing project management strategy which could give them a distinctive capability.

In order to balance the expansion of the company and resolve the problems faced by them, they needed a specific team behavior in which different departments are assigned separate responsibilities and roles who work simultaneously on a project without any overlapping duties or conflicting duties. This will help in dividing the tasks into teams and each team will be assigned tasks on the basis of their own capability which leads to specialization. The performance on the basis of specialization is always far more superior. The departments will be divided into sub-teams in order to decentralize the authority and responsibility. Each manager of the department will be held accountable for the duties assigned to his team which will help in clearing out the confusions and everyone will focus on their own work by knowing the tasks and the priority of the work.

According to the specialized areas of the managers and employees teams are divided, after going through the structural change BES had established 6 different departments, marketing department, consulting department, administrative department, project A and B. department, Research and Development Department, and Training Department.

Safeguards to complete project on time:

Timing of a project is one of the major parameters on which the efficiency of a project is judged. The departments that have similar responsibilities like (Department to each other will have their duties work simultaneously which will give sufficient time to the managers of the two team working on the same project but in a different way simultaneously to complete their respective tasks. The training of the employees can also help the employees to perform their duties in a much more efficient manner. Training can lead to reduction of the time taken in processes by a great margin. The recruitment process should also be managed carefully as employees should be selected on the basis of their capability to learn quickly and adapt to the business situation. Employees who only fit this criteria should be selected and then go through the training phase. Learning curve of such employees will be more suited to the organization.