The China case project, as illustrated in the study, has several issues preventing the project's completion. From the illustration, we identify several issues affecting the progress of this project. These are common problems that exist even in other projects. They include; lack of project clarity, lack of good leadership, incompetent staff, and low employee motivation.
The general manager says he does not understand what the project is about; all he knows is that the headquarters in the USA mandated the project. This is a clear indication that those who mandated this project never took the chance to explain the purpose of this project to the personnel of the offices in China.
For any group activity to be a success, good leadership must be exercised. In this case, the project had no manager from the beginning. This indicates the lack of direction in the performance of this project. According to Parviz and Vittal (2010), projects are the core of most management practices. This is because of their significant contribution to the overall organizational success. Thus, the lack of proper project management affects most organizational activities.
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Incompetent staff is another possible problem with this project. We learn from the case study that the hired business experts had strong loyalties back to their old management. Loyalty does not amount to qualification, and we can conclude that these experts were incompetent to perform such a demanding task.
The new project manager discovered employees had low morale towards work. This is a sign of a lack of desire to work. The regular journeys they had to take every now and then caused this de-motivation.
The issues hindering the continuation of this project can be solved through the well designed project management strategies. Project management involves the planning and coordinating all activities of the business undertaking, in order to achieve the set out goals and objectives. For the project to succeed, the management must put in place guidelines that will aid workers perform their duties. Reading the case study we find out that it has taken more time to complete the project due to the lack of good project management practices. The inter-relation of project execution and project management makes it difficult for one to exist without the other (Terence, 2001). The statement shows how critical project management is for execution of a project.
Team building is central to the success of any given organization in the world. Every organization ought to come up with strategies that will bridge the gap within the work force. There are several ways of building team cohesiveness that the management of China project can embrace; these are; organizing field trips, being neutral to all employees, encouraging team work by subdividing the available parts of the job in such a way that one performs a part of the activity and leaves it for another person to complete the remaining part. Team building leads to trust among the employees and as a result, the staff work best (La Fasto & Larson 2001).
Resources comprise of both money and human personnel. They are the greatest determinants of success of a project. Therefore, it is essential for managers to apply the best resource management practices in project performance. Resource management involves fair treatment of employees and accountability of funds invested in the project.
This project can be brought back on track if management considers three fundamental solutions to issues slowing the progress of the work. One of the ways to improve the work on the project is to train the workers and management of the project; this will make them understand the objectives and goals of the project. Another thing they can do is to hire more qualified experts on the basis of merit and not loyalty, this will make improve the quality of work. The last thing that can be done is the reduction of the number of trips of the foreign employees; they can be offered an accommodation. These three things will bring the project back on track.