Factor Need To Be Considered In Managing Projects: Top Management Support Muhammad Alifa Farhan - B051210266

FACTOR NEED TO BE CONSIDERED IN MANAGING PROJECTS: TOP MANAGEMENT SUPPORT

Muhammad Alifa Farhan - B051210266 Project Management Assignment

Introduction
The process of project implementation, involving the successful development, presents a challenge for managers. There are many factors to be considered by project manager to manage successful project. A project is generally considered to be successfully implemented if it: Comes in on-schedule Comes in on-budget Achieves basically all the goals originally set for it Is accepted and used by the clients for whom the project is intended

This assignment objective is to explain briefly what factor should be considered by manager to manage a successful project implementation. One of the most important factors is top management support. This assignment will focus to describe more about top management support factor.

Overview of the Articles

This assignment based on 5 journal article, they are: 1. Key Success Factors for Managing Projects Nader Sh. K., Ooi J., Abdollahi A., Key Success Factors for Managing Projects, World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology, 2011, Vol. 59, pp. 1826-1830. This paper aims to investigate on key success factors of project management in an organization. It is believed that recognizing important factors that contribute to successful project will help companies to increase the overall profitability. The result of this paper has strongly supported the relationship between independent variables and project management.

Factor Need To Be Considered In Managing Projects: Top Management Support Muhammad Alifa Farhan - B051210266

2. Criteria of project success: an exploratory re-examination. Lim, CS. and M Zain Mohamed, Criteria of project success: an exploratory re-examination, International Journal of Project Management, 1999, Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 243-248. The purpose of this article is to explore the issue from different perspectives of people looking at the project. The difference between criterion and factor is first discussed. Criteria are the set of principles or standards by which judgment is made; whereas factors are the set of circumstances, facts, or influences which contribute to the result. 3. Critical success factors in effective project implementation. Pinto J. K. and Slevin, D. P., Critical success factors in effective project implementation . Sloan Management Review, 1987, pp. 167-189. This paper defines what critical success factors in effective project implementation are. This paper describes development of the ten-factor model of project implementation. In the last, this paper explains about strategy a tactics in project management. 4. Top management support: mantra or necessity? Young, R., Jordan, E., Top management support: mantra or necessity? International Journal of Project Management, 2008, Vol. 26, pp. 713725. This research provides evidence that top management support is the most important critical success factor for project success and is not simply one of many factors. The nding is justied in the context of the project management literature and the IS factor research on project success. 5. Top management support - almost always necessary and sometimes sufcient for success: Findings from a fuzzy set analysis. Young, R., Simon Poon, Top management supportalmost always necessary and sometimes sufcient for success: Findings from a fuzzy set analysis, International Journal of Project Management, 2012. This paper builds on the work of Young and Jordan (2008) to provide stronger empirical evidence of the importance of top management support for project success. Fuzzy set analysis of 15 cases showed top management support to be much more necessary than any other success factor and sometimes being

Factor Need To Be Considered In Managing Projects: Top Management Support Muhammad Alifa Farhan - B051210266

sufcient for success. The contribution of this research may be to provide enough evidence to inuence top managers and practitioners to re-evaluate the conventional wisdom of the past 4050 years.

Key Learning Point

For a project to be successful, it is essential to understand the project requirements right from the start and go for project planning which provides the right direction to project managers and their teams and execute the project accordingly. A successful project is one that is delivered on time and managed within the budget. There are so many factor should be considered to get successful project. Lim (1999) says that the topic of this success factor for successful project has been researched extensively since 1980. Some of the major works included: 1. Krezner, who identified six critical success factor for successful projects: a. Corporate understanding of project management, b. Executive commitment to project management, c. Organizational adaptability, d. Project manager selection criteria, e. Project manager's leadership style, and f. Commitment to planning and control. 2. Slevin and Pinto, who identified ten general factors:
Table 1 Ten General Factors

Source: Slevin and Pinto (1987)

Factor Need To Be Considered In Managing Projects: Top Management Support Muhammad Alifa Farhan - B051210266

Slevin and Pinto also made a model of interaction of ten general factors of the project implementation profile.
Figure 1 Model of interaction of ten general factors

Source: Slevin and Pinto (1987)

3. The Standish Critical Success Factor a. Top Management Support b. User involvement c. Ownership d. Clear statement of requirements e. Proper planning f. Smaller project milestones

g. Realistic expectations h. Clear vision and objectives i. j. Competent staff Focused and hard working

Factor Need To Be Considered In Managing Projects: Top Management Support Muhammad Alifa Farhan - B051210266

From these success factors of the project implementation, many researches provide evidence that top management support is the most important critical success factor for project success. Top management support is essential in ensuring Project success. These researches has concluded that top management support have been recognized to have positive impact on project success. After this point, this assignment will continue to focus on top management support. There are some definitions of top management support. Some of authors define as devoting time as proportion with the cost and potential benefits of a project. Other authors define as the degree to which top management understands the importance of the project functions. Another definition is when a senior management project sponsor/champion, the CEO and other senior managers devote time to review plans, follow up on results and facilitate management problems Top Management support can take several different forms such as demonstrating commitment, helping team to overcome obstacles, making things happen and provide encouragement to team. In general, top management support comes in the form of sufficient resources allocated both manpower and the physical resources. It also includes clear authority and power given by the top management to the project leader and team members for ensuring the success of project implementation. Naders Research (2011) One of the researches that explain the relationship between top management support (involvement) and project performance is research that held by Nader (2011). The result of Naders research about the relationship between independent variables of Leadership of Project Manager and Top Management Involvement against the dependent variables of Project Performance is summarized in this table:
Table 2 Summary of Regression Analysis of Nader's Research

Source: Nader (2011)

Factor Need To Be Considered In Managing Projects: Top Management Support Muhammad Alifa Farhan - B051210266

The result gained from the regression analysis shows that there is relationship between top management involvement and project performance. This is also in line with the research done by previous researchers; whereby in this study, it confirmed that top management support or involvement possess positive impact to the success of project performance. Raymond and Ernest also stated that top management involvement is meta-factor that encompasses other success factor in project performance. This finding is also in line with the findings of Kerzner, where he concluded that project is very likely to be successful if visible support from top management is present. Youngs Research (2008) Youngs research (2008) provides evidence that top management support is the most important critical success factor for project success and is not simply one of many factors. This paper evaluate the importance of Top Management Support against the other commonly recognition. At the first, Young condensed The Standish critical success factors into five major categories: 1. Project Methodologies: Clear Statement of Requirements, Proper Planning, Smaller Project Milestones 2. User: User Involvement, Ownership 3. Top Management Support (TMS) 4. High-Level Planning: Realistic Expectations, Clear Vision And Objectives 5. Project Sta: Competent Staff, Focused And Hard Working The question of how important TMS is for project success in Youngs research will be studied through descriptive case studies. TMS deals with organizational phenomena where the boundaries between the phenomena and context are not clearly evident. Hence the case study has a distinct advantage over alternatives such as surveys, archival research, historical analysis and experiments because there is a how or why question being asked about a contemporary set of events over which the investigator has little or no control. Case study organizations were five organizations in Australia. They are TechServ, TechMedia, ABS, Agency and SkyHigh. The result of Youngs research is an organization which has no sponsor at any level, no CEO involvement and no top management interest tends to be fail project. On the other hand, an organization with a strong sponsor, active CEO involvement and active involvement of the other top manager tends to be successful project. This result is obtained by comparing the TechServ project which was a complete failure and the SkyHigh project which was a complete success. 6

Factor Need To Be Considered In Managing Projects: Top Management Support Muhammad Alifa Farhan - B051210266

Youngs Research (2012) In 2012, Young did another research to provide stronger empirical evidence of the importance of top management support for project success. This latest research use 10 more case study so they are 15 case study organizations. This research will address this issue by applying a fuzzy-set theoretic based methodology to case studies developed using qualitative techniques.
Figure 2 Project Success vs. TMS Figure 4 Project Success vs. Project Methodology

Figure 3 Project Success vs. User Involvement

Figure 5 Project Success vs. High Level Planning

Factor Need To Be Considered In Managing Projects: Top Management Support Muhammad Alifa Farhan - B051210266
Figure 6 Project Success vs. Staff

Figure 1 shows TMS correlates strongly with project success means that better top management support will give better relative success. The other CSFs shown in Figures 25 have much more variability and weaker correlations with success. User involvement and project management have positive relationships; high level planning also seems to have a positive relationship but slightly less so. Project staff may have a negative or no relationship with success as long as the quality of staff is fair (0.3) or better. The result of this research shows that the most important success factor of project implement is top management support.

Opinion
There are so many factor should be considered to get successful project. One of them is top management support (TMS). Many researches provide evidence that top management support is the most important factor for project success than other factors. Even though we know that TMS is the most important factor for project success, managers still have to consider other factors. Project is complex system that needs more than one factor to be considered to be success. For example, project with best TMS but with bad project methodologies or incompetent staff will tend to be failure project.

Factor Need To Be Considered In Managing Projects: Top Management Support Muhammad Alifa Farhan - B051210266

References
Nader Sh. K., Ooi J., Abdollahi A., Key Success Factors for Managing Projects, World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology, 2011, Vol. 59, pp. 1826-1830. Lim, CS. and M Zain Mohamed, Criteria of project success: an exploratory re-examination, International Journal of Project Management, 1999, Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 243-248. Pinto J. K. and Slevin, D. P., Critical success factors in effective project implementation. Sloan Management Review, 1987, pp. 167-189. Young, R., Jordan, E., Top management support: mantra or necessity? International Journal of Project Management, 2008, Vol. 26, pp. 713725. Young, R., Simon Poon, Top management supportalmost always necessary and sometimes sufcient for success: Findings from a fuzzy set analysis, International Journal of Project Management, 2012.