Case study: COMMUNICATION FAILURES

QUESTION 1:

How important are communication skills in project management?

Answer:

In project management a fundamental job in the achievement or disappointment of any project,

communication plays a vital role. Projects have different stages and according to that different

skilled people are involved so it is the project manager’s responsibility to communicate with

each individual and he need to inform to team members and stakeholders what they need to do

and their role and finally what outcome he is expecting from them for the project success. We

can’t imagine the importance of communication in project management. Communications

involves not only talking, but also speak and listened to. It is also termed as interaction between

different groups of people. For maximize the success and minimize the risks one need to improve

communication skills. There is a possibility to get more projects for the project manager if he can

create viable correspondence with its partner (A Belout, C Gauvreau , 2004).

QUESTION 2:

Was Herb the right person to be assigned as the project manager?

Answer:

A project may be large or small it should have project manager. Depending upon the project

scope and complexity the project manager’s job may differ. In this case study Herb has lot of
experience in R&D and he had a PhD in engineering also. Though he is an expert in subject he is

not the right person as a project manager. Most of the time he worked by himself by his

specialized skills and he interacted with the project team only during the project meetings. He

did not have any experience as a project manager but his organization expected that he would

assemble all the administration abilities in the activity. In the case study I observed that he is

unable to handle the situations properly when he need to answer and his communication skills

are poor among the colleagues and he is not delivering the information means what he is

expecting from them. With this discussion it is clearly understood that herb is not the right

person as project manager (H Kerzner, 2017).

QUESTION 3:

There were communications issues with Alice, Bob, Betty and Frank. For each

communication issue, where was the breakdown in communications: encoding, decoding,

feedback, and so on?

Answer:

Well, Herb as he performing a role of project manager got several bad experiences. It is totally

due to communication failure between sub-ordinates. Herb should interface with Alice, Bob,

Betty and Frank on daily basis. Alice is working in R&D department; she worked with Herb and

has lot of experience. Alice had an issue of encoding because he didn’t talk with Herb actually

what she is expecting from him. Alice is in the list of promotion and he actually want herb to

write a recommendation letter for her to promote. But Herb didn’t got her intension it was totally

encoding problem. Bob is working in the field of engineering. He faced the problem of
unmatched dispatch. Herb went to Bob’s engineering technicians and told them to perform on

other specification rather than what they actually do. But he didn’t inform them in writing, so the

technicians are not considered his direction. Betty had an anxiety accompanied by the data and

Frank had a question with Decoding. Betty took the decision to buy the procurements which are

needed in the manufacturing stage which is not actually her responsibility. It is actually Frank’s

duty to take the decisions as he is in the manufacturing department.

References

A Belout, C Gauvreau - International journal of project management, 2004 – Elsevier Factors

influencing project success: the impact of human resource management.

H Kerzner – 2017, Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and

controlling, books.google.com