1.

INTRODUCTION
In this part of the paper, the group sketches the framework of Limpopo

National Bank (LNB) in relation to project success and executive project

management fundamentals. As we can see from the case LNB is operating

by organizing itself in traditional management structure. It is one of a matured

bank along with other banks in the establishment of computerized information

processing and decision making. Besides the management of LNB

established many complex projects to be pursued each requiring the

involvement of various departments.

However, the bureaucracy of the traditional management structure which is

not compatible with application of modernizations and execution of many

projects creates severe administrative problems to LNB. So how then LNB’s

management can overcome on top of these problems and successfully

implement change considering the executive project management

fundamentals will be highlighted as follows.

LNB to be successful in its project management the first step should be

creating an environment for projects within such an alien organization. The

management of LNB has to work to develop strategic emphasis and

reinforces the idea that the participation of the entire organization is

necessary to create project success. If not, a tendency of attempting too

1
many projects will be in place, which is called by practitioners as a well-

known killer of the project success.

Therefore, LNB to be successful in its project management, the current

structural arrangements, traditional management structure has to be changed

to new organizational structure as project based structure.

The group has learnt that in traditional management structure, emphasis is

given for own departmental success. This is the same for LNB, where each

department sets its own priority of works and strives to achieve them, non-

integrated efforts. This reveals the existence of less emphasis to link between

LNB’s strategy and projects.

The LNB top management does not aware or not has knowledge about the

importance of their support or role in influencing the project management

success. In executive project management fundamentals, this behaviors

needs to be changed and the executive should understand the support of top

management significantly affects the success of projects.

LNB intends to run the project management by assigning only a project

manager. It does not consider the formation of core team comprising people

from different departments. In this aspect LNB missed one of the

fundamental component parts of the successful environment which considers

establishment of important project core team. Developing core team process

2
at the beginning of the project and make it functional to the end of the project

avoids unnecessary delays and shorten project cycle time.

The organizational design of LNB is found in highly centralized corporate

culture which hinders the efforts towards supporting project management.

The executive is trying to implement a project management system into its

functional structure, which denies the successful project requirements of

cross-departmental teams. Thus as executive project management

fundamentals dictates, LNB’s management requires to set up suitable

organizational structure that supports for project management success.

The LNB’s policies, procedures and relationship confine all information to

freeze following the hierarchy, which is defined for a functional organization.

However, the success of project management should require intact

information and that allows information flows should be across the

hierarchical components. Therefore, developing a project management

information system would be part of a component for creating successful

environment in LNB.

The LNB executive also attempts to place or appoint the project manager

from internal sources which is purely exercising accidental project manager.

This shows absence of plan for project manager selection and development.

The executive assumes the position as a temporary and any one who has

good track in his or her current performance can perform it successfully. But

this is not in the case of successful project management application. Project

managers need to master behavioral, business, organizational and technical

3
skills. Thus selection and development of project managers requires a

serious planning.

LNB has not yet developed the post project review, resulting not able to learn

from its experience. This impedes building on its strength and innovative new

ways of competitiveness. In executive project management fundamentals

developing learning organization can be placed through reviewing past

experience/ project accomplishments. This process is the lifeblood to learning

organizations that feed and changes all other components of successful

environment for their project management.

An initiative group works with upper managers and project managers to

increase project management knowledge and practice throughout the

organization is one of the executive project management fundamentals. In

the case of LNB has not seen such initiatives. The project management

initiatives contributes a lot for successful and creation of new projects.

The final recommendation in executive project management fundamentals

concerns on adopting and applying the concepts discussed so far. Changing

to project management means changing everything and replacing all by new

practices and this requires a strong commitment and high integrity from upper

managers. Proven action and exemplary moves of top managements should

be choice less.

4
 2. LNB Project Management Practice

2.1 Project Management Fundamentals

To have a clear picture of what a project and project managements are, Let us try to

give a brief definition of what a project and project managements are. A project can

briefly define as a unique endeavor to produce a set of deliverables with in a clearly

specified time, cost and quality constraints

Project management is the discipline of planning, and managing resources to bring

about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives. A project is

temporary endeavor, having a defined beginning and end /usually constrained by date,

but can be by funding or deliverables, undertaken to meet unique goals and objectives,

usually to bring about beneficial change or added value. The primary challenge of

project management is to achieve all of the project goals, and objectives while honoring

the preconceived project constraints.

As clearly stated on Graham and Englunal (2004), on important function of upper

management is supporting project teams by redesigning the organization to support

project management .This is to be done either redesigning the organization to

emphasize projects into the current organization Either way, the upper management

team crucially defines the project manager’s Job, degree of authority and autonomy,

and relationship to both the home department of the project and other departments in

the organization. Most people become project managers by accident. The usual path to

the job is through expertise in a technical specialty. In the past, these with technical skill

5
were told to run projects that used it. The best system analysts or programmers were

put in charge of software development projects, and the best engineers were put in

charge of product development projects. However, the technical part of a project is often

the smallest and easiest part. Technical success does not lead to project success; it is

necessary but not sufficient. Upper management needs to take the lead to put in to

place a system that selects and develops then people with the greatest potential to

manage projects.

Based on the above facts the following points are the basic executive project

management fundamental components as discussed on Graham and Englunal (2004),

and organization should take into consideration in the implementation of project

management. Executing Project management requires creating of successful

organizational environment .Successful organizational environment has components

1. Successful environment suggests that upper management teams work to

develop strategic emphasis for project

2. Project success involves changing some behaviors of upper Manager.

3. Successful environment considers support of the all-important project core team

–this is the idea of supporting project teams has become nearly universal

accepted

4. Creating an organization to support the project management in endeavor.

Successful project requires cross-departmental team instead of implant a project

management system into a functional organization.

5. Creating a project management information system, this is absolutely essential to

support the previous four components.

6
 6. Establish project based organization.

7. Deals with a learning organization, which is necessary to proceed into the future.

8. Concerted effort exists to drive the continuous improvement of project

management across the organization.

The challenges facing organization are how to tie their projects more closely to the

organization’s goals and strategy, how to handle the growing number of ongoing

projects, and how to make these projects more successful. Project management has

emerged because the characteristics of contemporary society demand the development

of new methods of management, Project Management Study Guide (University of

South Africa, 2010:10)

There are also forces contribute to the failures of project management in organizations

like internal conflict member anxiety and frustrations, time wasted on irrelevant issues,

and decisions made haphazardly by senior people, by coalitions or by default. To

perform well and become successful, management must remove all organizational

barriers and demonstrate continued support for the project team structure and

autonomy hence the need to develop and support the core team, Project Management

Study Guide (University of South Africa, 2010:12)

All these will be discussed in detail in the next parts of this assignment based on the

given case on LNB

7
 2.2 LNB project Management Practice

Most future growth is organization will result from successful development projects they

generate new products, service or procedures such projects are also a principal way of

creating organization change, implementing change and growth strategies is usually

entrusted to project managers. However, project success is often as much a result of

the organizational environment as if the skills of the project managers (Graham and

Englunal (2004). When we look these situation in LNB, the assigned person for the

selection of project manager do not take into consideration the executive project

management fundamentals mentioned in the previous part of this paper .Due to these

the functional mangers are not totally interested to be project managers and really a

problem the organization to be successful and effective in performing any project.

Future organizations will see the end of the accidental project manager. Project

management must be seen as a viable position, not just a temporary annoyance and

project management skill become a core organizational competence. This requires a

conscious planned program for project manger selection and training.

LIMPOPO NATIONAL BANK faces two basic problems. The first one is a challenge in

how to design the structure of the project and the second one is how to appoint project

manager

Selecting Project Manager

8
Meredith and (2006) describes, selecting the project manager is one of the important

decisions concerning a project. The best project manager is the one who can get the job

done. A project manager at least should manifests the following skills and behaviors, -

• A matured individual

• A hard -noised manager

• With strong technical background

• someone who is currently available

• someone in good terms with senior executives

• A person who can keep the project team happy

• A person who has worked in different departments

• A person who can walk on (or part) the waters.

As Graham and England, (2004) describes, the project manager to be selected should

be the person who qualify or manifest the following characteristics or qualification.

• Understands the need for better project management in organization of the

future.

• Understands the role of upper management is critical in developing successful

project management practices throughout the organization.

• Understands the past organizational forms, the functional or matrix organization,

may be detrimental to developing good project practices.

• Embraces the tenets of the post-bureaucratic organization that emphasize

teams, consensus action, empowerment, trust and open communication.

9
• Believes in and behaves with integrity and authenticity as a requirement for

leading others.

• Leads an organization through the revitalization process.

• Acts with upper managers as a team of change agents to develop an

environment that supports project management.

• Fits together all pieces of the puzzle required to create an environment for a

successful organization.

• Realize the need to change some behavior to accommodate the ambiguity

inherent in project situations.

• Understands the need for planning on projects and fully supports a project

planning process.

• Supports focus on single tasking rather than multitasking to improve efficiency.

• Negotiates reasonable and believable project deadlines based on the project

plan and available resources.

• Encourage and rewards desired behavior rather than behavior that may be

detrimental to the project.

• Understands that the practices of project management are often different from

the practice of departmental management.

• Realizes that projects create something new and does not change project

specifications because of anxiety over that newness.

• Does not interfere in project operations.

• Provides adequate staffing.

10
 • Ensures that the organizational reward system properly motivates work on

projects.

When we look the approach of selection project manager in LNB, the bank assigned

responsible body ,to select project manager is simply interviewed different functional

mangers to know their interest to become project manage, instead of properly

implementing the realities discussed above. In search of a project manager LIMPOPO

NATIONAL BANK decided to promote from within as long as it is possible to find

qualified personnel. They were more interested that the prospective project manager

should be the one who was a good performer and a person who is familiar to internal

environment. However, the actual finding was to the contrary, no candidates were

willing to accept the promotion of being a project manager. It is difficult to decide only

one way is best, means promote from within or find qualified personnel from outside. So

organizations should have to take into consideration the skills and behaviors, and

characteristics or qualification of project managers mentioned above.

To finalize the selection of competent manager organizations upper manager should

give strong attention on five top criteria for competent and successful project managers

that are the results of research and experience mentioned by Graham and Englund

(2004).

• They Have Enthusiasm

• They Have Tolerance for Ambiguity

• They possess High Coalition and Team-Building Skills

• They Have Client –Customer Orientation

11
 • They Have a Business Orientation

Designing Project Structure

Structure of a project depends on the organization goals, type of work in the project and

the environment. “The basic purpose for initiating a project is to accomplish specific

goals. The reason for organizing the task as a project is to focus the responsibility and

authority for the attainment of the goals on an individual or small group”. (Meridith, JR

and Mantel, SJ. 2006)

Choosing an organizational structure among the three types of organization structure of

a project is determined by the situation, risk involved and cultural preferences of the

parent organization. Types of project structures are: -

• Pure project structure

• Functional Project structure

• Matrix project structure

Bolles(2002) mentioned that positioning the project management function in a

hierarchical organizational structure establishes its autonomy and thus ”ownership” of

the responsibility for setting up ,distributing, supporting ,and managing the application of

project management practices within the company.

Graham and Englund(2004) also stated that the fully projectized organization is best

when projects are the lifeblood of the firm. It helps ensure that projects are as high in

quality as possible and done in the minimum time .These is because most resources

are fully dedicated to projects only, not departmental work. In reality, because project

12
work is different, it requires a project based organization. The project management in

LNB will be failed because upper management had not created on environment for

project success. LNB organizational structure is matrix project structure, in which the

bank integrate projects into functional departments, that means functional control

departments while project managers coordinate the work across functions

But in general, the matrix organization tended to cause more problems than it solved

.the major fault was that it was a marginal change-a mere modification to the old

hierarchical organization (Graham and Englund, 2004)

2.3. Recommendation (264)

• Bolles(2002) strongly stated that, project management is no longer viewed as a

system internal to the organization. It is now viewed as a competitive weapon

that brings quality and value added to the customer. The organization as a whole

must reorganize and adopt new attitude that embrace project management best

practices as the normal way of working. This enables them to bring the full power

of this new competitive weapon to be in the battle of continued business growth

and, in many cases, ultimate survival in today’s highly competitive global market.

These realities and facts force LNB to establish project management and require

implementation of executive project management fundamentals properly.

• Today’s global market companies, regardless of industry and size, are looking to

improvement their systems and become more competitive one way they are

attempting to do this is by establishing project management as a core

competency throughout the organization. By setting up standardized procedure

with in the companies, they hope to learn from past mistakes, make processes

13
more efficient, and develop people is skills and talents to work more effectively.

The list of organization attempting to integrate project management disciplines

and best practices into the way they manage their businesses is expanding daily;

however those who have succeeded in doing so is significantly smaller. The

answer for many of these companies is positioning. By positioning we mean that

the group charged with the implementation of project management and best

practices is positioned in the upper most levels of the firm. It is critical that all

levels workers and managers see that the executive level of the firm supports of

without hesitation, publicly, and completely (Bolles, 2002).These global business

competition and facts forced LIMPOPO NATIONAL BANK to act in an efficient

manner in which it guarantee and satisfy its customers demand. Nowadays, the

natures of business functions are becoming more complex. To keep track of the

effectiveness of the business, to gain advantage over competitors, to produce

goods and services to the market, to handle personnel records properly a

systematic way of collecting and processing data has become the daily practice

of businesses. LIMPOPO NATIONAL BANK to satisfy its customer demand it

should have to organized and implement pure project organizational structure.

Since position in the project management function at the highest level

within the organization provides the measure of autonomy necessary to

extend its authority across the organization while substantiating the value

and importance the function has in the eyes of executive management

(Bolles, 2002).

14
 • Establishing project management in most organizations is very difficult to do

because managers are afraid of losing their authority and control over the

resources that are assigned to them .Workers are afraid of being hold

accountable for performing a new set of requirements. This team, expressed as

resistance, comes from lack of information and understanding about how the

change will affect their jobs Bolles(2004). The same problems are happened on

LNB, so the LNB should have to follow executive project fundamentals on

establishing project management and assigning project managers.

3. Conclusion

15
Bibliography/References

• Meridith, JR & Mantel, SJ. 2006. Project management: a managerial approach.

6th edition. New York: Wiley & Sons.

16
17