Project Management Mark Mullaly\'s Organizational

Project Management

Mark Mullaly's Organizational PM: Dream or Reality

Mullaly's article strives to answer crucial questions about project management. In short, the author focuses on the capability of organizations to create and foster project management. In addressing the stringent issue, Mullaly commences by defining project management in today's context. This approach is necessary in order to set the basis of the discussion, but also to ensure that all readers get a true sense and understanding of the concepts and ideas to be further along introduced and discussed.

Mullaly as such addresses the critical aspects of project management, namely the expectations of integrated system which create high quality operations and complete the desired outcomes. Ironically enough however, when project management is understood as a symbol and a mechanism of competency, it is also pointed out by the author that project management is delivered by people, not systems. This human component increases the complexity of project management.

At the level of project managers, they strive to integrate unity in the sense of aligning the goals and operations of all staffs in the sense of attaining the pre-established organizational objectives. But the project managers are also marked by individualist features and a project can only be integrated when managed by a single individual. When two managers administer a project, discrepancies would be encountered. In such a context, compromise is necessary and compromises often create frustrations and generate impediments to efficient project management.

This situation is made clear by Mark Mullaly, but an explanation should be added to this. In this order of ideas, the author mentions that organizations tend to hire specialized managers to assist them with project administration. In other words, when economic agents have a project they cannot handle by themselves, they hire a specialized manager. They do not focus on creating their own managers who would be professionally raised in the organizational culture and would understand the organizational objectives, resources or stakeholder complexities. The formation of such a manager is tedious and expensive, but it would help the company enhance the quality of its project management (Odiorne, 1990). In this line of thoughts then, it can be argued that organizational culture is essential to the success of project management.

Returning to the point of Mullaly, the researcher points to the study conducted on 65 firms, which has lead to the identification of various styles of project management. Among them, the following:

Ad hoc project management with skills for hire

Emphasis on recruiting and selecting talented project managers

Project management supported by complex systems and procedures, which are seldom however implemented

Forced or centralized project management.

In most of the cases studied -- 85 per cent -- project management was inadequately implemented, but Mullaly argued that positive examples still existed and that efficient project management can be created.

"Organizational project management is a vision, and it's a realistic one. It isn't fiction and it is not a fairy tale. For a select few, it is their current truth. For many others, however, it is still a dream. […] To be successful, however, requires commitment, focus and conscious investment by all stakeholders" (Mullaly).