Partnering and Negotiations in Project Management

NB: We do not resell your papers. Upon ordering, we do an original paper exclusively for you.

NB: All your data is kept safe from the public.

Click Here To Order Now!

Table of Contents

The three steps to confirm that the outsourcer understands the requirements
The key to exercising influence within an organization
Reference

The three steps to confirm that the outsourcer understands the requirements

The steps taken to ensure thorough understanding of the requirements by the outsourcer are.

Provision of a detailed breakdown of project requirements and guidelines. This may include the provision of training (Gray & Larson, 2008).
Incorporation of outsourcers into partnering schemes. Mutual trust is the outcome coupled with long-term commitments to the project. This also provides room for improvements to the project (Gray & Larson, 2008).
Involve the outsourcer through principled negotiation. It helps to deal with unreasonable outsourcers (Gray & Larson, 2008).

The key to exercising influence within an organization

Collaborating and partnering

Collaborating and partnering involve the identification of important stakeholders. Stakeholders in an organization could be staff, leaders of various departments, even subordinate staff (Gray & Larson, 2008). This relates to the internal environment of an organization. An external environment includes suppliers and other organizations. The keyword in this discussion is interesting. If the stakeholders have a common interest in the success of an organization, organizational leaders must target such individuals and organizations. Role-model leaders in an organization bring about influence. Consequently, a good leader must be capable of figuring out the fact that stakeholders affect the results of an organization in a duality: direct and indirect.

Principled negotiation and its four key points

When principled negation is mentioned, the team setting of an organization takes an upper hand. The negotiation takes into account participants’ capability to arrive at results with an open-minded efficiency (Gray & Larson, 2008). The second aspect considers members of a team as potential and first-time solution-givers to a problem. It is based on the following key points: the existence of boundaries between participants and the problem, objective and fair guidelines of negotiation, provision of alternatives to negotiations, and evasion of early position-taking.

“Managing and leading a project is essentially the same thing”

I agree. Management cannot be separated from leading. Leadership and management are attributes that shape and design the success of a given project. In support of the agreement, and from the perspective of a project manager, the best manager has both attributes. During the entire lifecycle of a project, a manager meets a dual role of management and leading. Management and leadership are applied simultaneously.

Supporting attributes borrowed from the two results in a balanced blend, which is neither management nor leadership. An examination of management inclines project management towards results. Results are outcomes of a team in a project. Each individual team player in a project has to live up to his promises to the manager with respect to particular responsibilities. Behind any of these, accomplishment is preceding leadership. The leadership does come from a project manager (Gray & Larson, 2008). To this extent, direction, and inspires his assembly of the work force through, aligning it towards the achievement of project objectives. Thus, leadership and management correlate during project management.

Partnering in managing projects

Partnering is a collaborative agreement between or among companies with similar project objectives and/or goals (Gray & Larson, 2008). It can occur at the organization level. Other forms of partnering include project contractors collaborating with their clients or between contractors and subcontractors (particularly in construction organizations). It has become popular for managing projects because of its benefits to the management process. The benefits include cost-effectiveness and enhanced management of the project’s available resources. In addition, communicational conflicts common when organizations do not partner are mitigated.

“Team building is nice to have for a project, but we really need to concentrate on the planning and technical challenges—that is the make-or-break point for this project”

I agree with the statement. Building a team without a planning and technical challenge’ perspective results in a failing project. Technical challenges carry more weight and are more disastrous when they besiege a project. Team building alone cannot help achieve the completion of a project. A project manager can build a team coated with magnificent expertise but fail to integrate it into the project objectives (Gray & Larson, 2008).

It is a requirement that a project manager should not forget that he/she has management and leadership roles. Management is composed of planning and coming up with strategies for mitigating or controlling technical challenges emergent in a project. Leadership helps with the alignment of the team towards planning objectives of the project or managing a team to reduce the technical challenges. Therefore, planning and technical challenges in management should be given an upper hand.

Reference

Gray, C.F., & Larson, E.W. (2008). Project management: the managerial process. Pennsylvania: McGraw-Hill.