What management skill do you find most necessary for effective and efficient project
management? Why?

Financial management skills are critical in the running of any successful project. With project management, one has to master the art of executing tasks properly, through planning and control. It gets complicated further especially because there are specific goals to be met within certain tight time schedules and budgets. Finances are critical in ensuring everything goes according to plan. Right from the conceptualization stage of a project, a proper understanding of project appraisal is necessary (Harrison and Lock, 2017). Once appraised, a careful balancing act is necessary to ensure that finances, which are particularly scarce resources, are optimally used to grow the firms and shareholder value. According to Cohen (2000), project managers, to successfully implement any project, need to have an understanding of a company’s cash cycle and how a specific project fits into it. A cash cycle in this case means financing, operating, investing, and returning. 

Reference

Cohen, D. J. (2000). Why finance matters for project managers. Paper presented at Project Management Institute Annual Seminars & Symposium, Houston, TX. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.

Harrison, F., & Lock, D. (2017). Advanced project management: a structured approach. Routledge.

Topic 8 DQ 2

Describe your approach to tracking a project. What kinds of issues would you focus on if you were a project manager? Why?

A project has different aspects. From them all, I would focus mostly on issues of talent management and on leadership. Talent management is an important factor that heavily determines the success of any business project. All operational aspects of a project are executed and monitored by people. These people need to have the requisite skills which they come with or they acquire while on the job. As such, they should be trained to ensure that they fit into the program on professional levels (Ramazani and Jergeas, (2015). Second, people need to be motivated to ensure that they deliver optimally. This said, programs and structures need to be set to ensure that people are well skilled as well as sufficiently motivated. 

The next issue is leadership. Leadership goes beyond the aspect of management. Leaders need to be futuristic and positive. Being in a position of leadership in a project, one needs to be particularly emphatic about a holistic view of the status (Morgan, 2015). From such a position, a leader is then able to deploy other concepts of good citizenship such as teamwork, motivating and communication. Leadership is about influencing people towards a common urge other. 

References

Ramazani, J., & Jergeas, G. (2015). Project managers and the journey from good to great: The benefits of investment in project management training and education. International Journal of Project Management, 33(1), 41-52.Morgan, R. B. (2015). Developing Skills of Leadership through Service Learning: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and a Path to Effective Leadership. Tenn. L. Rev., 83, 915