The following Case study deals with a problematic situation within a company, named Eastern Electronic Inc. Since the company developed a new BAT program, the need for a new Program Manager emerges. This case study will firstly illustrate the needed skills and properties the Program Manager Job requires.
Afterwards, this paper will compare the skills and properties of the two perspective Job candidates and recommend a decision. Finally, the tasks and challenges will of the Job as a BAT Program Manager will be shown. . Who should Mr.. Innkeeper select? Why? Before starting a comparison between the two candidates, It Is essential to define, which Job requirements are needed for the Job as a BAT Program Manager.
The first requirement of the future BAT Program Manager is that he should know the product he is working on. Therefore you need an experienced engineer who is able to sort through the pieces by himself when there is any technical problem which could inhibit the progress. He has to be able to explain technical details comprehensible to the top management and also to the customer.A good program manager should be blew to provide an up-to-the-minute status report about the program and the current projects. The future BAT Program Manager should know the customers and furthermore be acceptable for them.
Mr.. Innkeeper mentioned that the perspective BAT Program Manager primarily needs to be competent of managing such a large program as the BAT, which Is twice as big as any current program of the EYE (Eastern Electronic Inc. ). This presupposes that the manager is willing to sacrifice himself for the wealth of the organization and his employees.
Loyalty and dedication are big parts of this, above al, the loyalty should be addressed to his employees and customers. Sales ability is another required competence of the future BAT Program Manager. Those sales abilities missed out by the former Program Managers who was more focused on the technical qualities of the product. So the perspective manager has to be able to work out the best balance between technical objectives and also the cost schedule.
The last but also a very Important competence Is that he has to be capable to obtain internal cooperation from support groups.In the following section the properties and skills of both candidates are Illustrated ND compared to each other. The first shown candidate is Mr.. Martin, who is 44 years old and working for Eastern air missile project.
In the paper are many skills and properties of Mr.. Martin mentioned, which are speaking in his favor. In comparison to Mr..
Doodler, Mr.. Martin is characterized by his huge technical know-how and his compliant acting to the company's regulations and guidance. As a result of this skills, Mr.
. Martin is known for his sensitively behavior regarding the top management policy.Due to his technical interests, he gets better along with the functional line managers alike the functional apartment managers. On the other hand, the social skills of Mr..
Martin are less distinctive in comparison to the social skills of Mr.. Doodler. This is shown by the fact, that he did less for the personal development of his employees. Similar to this, he made most of the decisions by his own and told his staff what had to be done.
In his view, the Program Manager's role is to stay on top of the things. Another disadvantageous skill of Mr..Martin is that he seems to be inflexible. In his opinion, the selling belongs to the marketing and has less to do with the Job of a Program Manager. The second candidate, Mr.
. Boyd Doodler, is 38 years old and works in the company for nine years. In the past he was the former program manager of the Army COW Tracker (surface-to- air missile). There are several positive as well as negative attitudes of Doodler to mention. Regarding the positive skills of Doodler, most of his staff praised him, since he developed them personally and tries to keep personal contact with them.Another positive attitude of Doodler is that he really cares about customer's request and the resulting relationship with them.
To satisfy the customer's request, he productized his program to the maximum possible extent. The consequence was that he consistently satisfied the desires of the customers. In spite of not having the most sophisticated technical knowledge, he managed his program well and his staff was really convinced about Doodlers leadership, because he had the right attitude to make difficult things simple.Another benefit of Doodler is that he really lives for this Job. Once he is involved in a program, he immediately considers it as his primary Job.
Moreover Doodler has the ability to expand his Job task. When Doodler feels comfortable and save, he devotes a portion of his time to selling advanced versions of is project and broadening the APS of his existing product. Besides that he quickly discovers and anticipates trouble spots. Mostly he pursues two or more courses of action to solve the problems.A further positive attitude of Doodler is that he actively focuses on the negotiation process, which enables Doodler to select his staff personally. Another advantage of Doodler is that he has shown the ability to lead and control a group of 170 people, which is quite essential for the selection of the program manager of the BAT program, because the company expects BAT to be one f its major business opportunities in the future.
After having described Doodlers positive attitudes I want to shift to his negative ones.One of his disadvantages compared to Martin is that Doodler is the weaker engineer and he is working for nine years in the company compared to 22 years of Martin. Some people in the company have mixed feelings about him, because he does not constantly care about the issues of his subordinates. Especially the oriented, hard-headed attitude about their groups.
Many employees blame him to be overbearing, because if he did not get the service he expected firstly he did not care bout discussing the reason and secondly he went directly to top management to get the approval.Besides that Doodler consistently ignores company procedures if he feels he has a reason to do so, which brought him a bad repute. One of his biggest disadvantages compared to Martin is his foresightedness. This is the reason why he is not as sensitive as Martin is to the top management policy and functional managers believe that his "take-over" attitude is fragmenting groups. Fortunately he eliminated the issues with the functional managers.
Meanwhile Doodler cooperates with them and they know what he expects from them to do.What brought him additional discredit was his demand of an approval for direct control of certain functional personnel to end poor performance and late deliveries. Conclusion We as a group would select Boyd Doodler to be our new program manager. We think that he has the right abilities to be in a leading position.
Although he is younger than Martin and not as long as he is in the company, he has shown in the past that he is capable to lead and control a group up to 170 people, while not having the technical know-how that his opponent, Mr.. Martin has.We know that he has on the one hand he attitude to be overbearing, but on the other hand he always gives the best for his job and tries to solve problems immediately, even if he ignores the top management. According to our opinion it is essential for leaders to take risks and act on themselves.
Moreover he has the right soft skills, which are vital for leadership. He really cares about the well-being of his staff, while he keeps personal contact. Additionally Doodler always attempts to motivate and train them personally to play a bigger role in the company. . Outline a program for developing Program Managers.
To outline a program for developing a Program Manager it is important, first of all to define the skills and tasks of a Program Manager and additionally to consider the entire program management in more detail, too. Program management is defined as a temporary not necessarily management task of an organization, which includes the creative plan, the overall guidance and controlling, whereupon controlling means here the control and steering.So it contents a defined set of related projects. So, a program can be considered as a structure of multiple projects.
Therefore a program manager has the responsibility of he success of the program, and is depending on the success of each projects, which are managed by the project managers. The aim of a program is to realize benefits that are of strategic importance for the respective company or institution. The central task of the program manager is the program planning, the strategic management and the process change management.Together with its project managers the If it threat that a project in the program would fail, then the whole success of the program is in danger. Therefore, all participants should apply to the same requirements. These are: Common goals and strategies Common networked planning (master plan and milestones) Common organizational rules Uniform and project management methods Common communication structures and culture Common Joint Program budget Common Joint program marketing The unique requirements of all members in the program are of great importance and a prerequisite for the success.
In addition to the program, the Project Managers are usually the main contact for the Program Manager. Although the tasks of both are almost the same, there are clear differences in the distribution of roles and expenses. Project manager are the leader f their projects and Program Manager are the leader of every Project Manager in the Program Organization.In comparison of both Manager the following differences are listed: planning refined crude information in detailed plans comprehensive plan and plan templates as a framework for the detailed change is open minded to use- has to control their making changes and processes manages these Supervises the work of the Monitored to ensure the creation of the product monitoring Expected changes and progress of the components to the higher targets, timetables, budgets and benefits steering managed the project team managed his team and the awards the project goals gives them vision and guidance Program steps for developing a program manager 1 .
Introduction and implementation of the company aims. This step gives the Program Manager an overview of the long term goals at the strategic direction; this is especially for program manager which are from another department or from another enterprise for a faster orientation at the new department. 2. Implementation in the Program Organization. In this step the program manager gets to know his new team employees. In addition the program manager should learn the workflow of the program manager department.
. Implementation in the operational and strategic methods. This procedure should guarantee transparent approach.This part should increase the motivation of every employee which is involved in the whole program.
4. Introduction in the different projects. The program managers should get an overview about the aims of every several steps and meet the project leader. 5.
Improvement hard and soft skills. Through the introduction in the different projects the program manager can refresh his hard skills (technical knowledge). Should backlog be present, extern or intern courses and seminars can refresh the needed oft skills. A program manager has to bring some special qualities to be successful in his work.
These requirements are including soft and hard skills.Especially soft skills are very important. First of all a program manager have to bring leadership skills. Leadership does not mean to make all decision alone and specify the direction to the team. Leadership qualities are reflecting the ability to submit responsibility. A program manager, who wants to do everything himself, looses soon the direction.
So leadership skills are characterized by capacity of self-criticism, flexible management Tyler, submit responsibility, further education and development, showing tolerance and to have an open ear for the employees. Another important ability for program managers is to have social skills.That means to deal with yourself and with other people. Social interaction is addressed. For a program manager it is important to bring communication skills, that means listen actively and to deal with problems constructively, dealing with conflicts with other people and not to displace them. In addition abilities like responsibility, contact readiness, humanity and teamwork are required.
For enterprise who act global it necessary that a program manager have global and cultural knowledge. In other cultures words can mean different things to different people and in some cultures the tone changes depending to the context. There side words can imply different things in different languages. So it's necessary to have a one language like English to communicate without cultural and communication misconceptions. First of all not all soft skills can be learned, some soft skills are only acquired through business experience. But seminars and further education can train soft skills.
For a aerogram manager a individual seminar can coach specific missing soft skills abilities. Depending on company size such seminars can be offered by the own enterprise or at foreign providers.The aim is to mediate the missing soft skills through the targeted training and support. Beside the soft skills the hard skills for a program manager are important too.
So a new program manager often don't know all the details and haven't the knowledge that is necessary for all specific projects that he manage. To get to know the responsibility employees and the individual project departments a specific intensive raining program for several months will put the program manager in every different project for some weeks to get to know the people and the workflow of every different project.This will guarantee that the manager get basic specialist knowledge and overview over the different people that are responsible for the different projects. In summary a program manager need hard skills for the required program, but soft skills are more necessary because he delegates this Program Organization.
So a Program Manager has a leading and guidance function in the organization.
