Case: Emily Pemberton is an IS project manager facing a difficult situation. Emily works for the First Trust Bank, which has recently acquired the City National Bank. Prior to the acquisition, First Trust and City National were bitter rivals, fiercely competing for market share in the region. Following the acrimonious takeover, numerous staff were laid off in many banking areas, including IS. Key individuals were retained from both banks' IS areas, however, and were assigned to a new consolidated IS department. Emily has been made project manager for the first significant IS project since the takeover, and she faces the task of integrating staffers from both banks on her team. The project they are undertaking will be highly visible within the organization, and the time frame for the project is somewhat demanding. Emily believes that the team can meet the project goals successfully, but success will require that the team become cohesive quickly and that potential conflicts are avoided. What strategies do you suggest that Emily implement in order to help ensure a successfully functioning project team?
Ans:
In today’s highly competitive business world, rivalries between companies leads to either collaboration or acquisitions, because of more advantages in work together than work against each other. Acquisition of one company over another increase the market share and less competition leads to more productivity on one side. On the other side, company has to face lot of difficulties to get the new company records on track. Emily Pemberton facing the same situation here.
Emily Pemberton as a IS project manager facing difficulties to maintain increased number of employees in acquisition of City National by First Trust Bank. Emily has a responsibility to maintain and motivate the numerous staff towards successful completion of the project. To do that, Emily herself has to be confident and motivated.
Emily has to perform some following essential strategies to lead the staff towards successful completion of the project on time.
First, arrange the meeting with all the members to get to know each other. Then, making a resume kind of report of each every members including their details like their past experiences, roles they performed in company before acquisition helps in sorting the staff.
Second, staffing the process of determining the enough number of people needed for the project. Team should have average number of staff members depending on the number of days to complete the project. More staff increase the chances of complete the project early meanwhile difficult to coordinate and manage the staff members. Staffing plan is used to list the required roles and proposed structure of reporting for the project.
Third, Group Cohesiveness brings group members become unity and committed to project to complete the goal. Effective communication, positive instructions to each other and sharing different views of ideas makes easier to accomplish the project. Project charter schedules the every detailed aspects of team work such as staff meeting schedules, how to communication with each other and procedures to update the work plan.