Theses and dissertations (Management Sciences)
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://ir-dev.dut.ac.za/handle/10321/14
Browse
4 results
Search Results
Item Factors influencing the effectiveness of project managers in the telecommunications industry in South Africa(2017) Ndlovu, Pholani; Chetty, SoobramoneyThe South African mobile telecommunications industry has grown into a multi-billion rand industry that employs thousands of people and connects millions of people across the globe. In order to accomplish the latter, multi-million rand capital projects must be initiated and successfully executed. It is against this background that this study investigated the factors influencing the effectiveness of project managers in the telecommunications industry in South Africa. The target population of the study consisted of project managers in the five telecommunications companies in South Africa who were registered with Project Management South Africa (PMSA). The primary data, which was collected personally by the researcher through self-administered questionnaires, was analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), Version 23. The study revealed, inter alia, that most project managers in the telecommunications industry in South Africa perceived negotiating skills, technical knowledge, and management style as being most important for effectively confronting the many challenges faced by them, inter alia, scope management, quality management, and risk management, so that projects were successfully executed. There was unanimity amongst the project managers that training in project management had a positive impact on the performance of project managers. Although three out of every four project managers possessed a postgraduate qualification, the majority of project managers were of the view that a diploma was adequate to practice as a project manager in the telecommunications industry in South Africa. However, it was more important for project managers to possess project management qualifications. In addition to the above, an analysis of the results revealed that, in order of importance, the effectiveness of the project managers in the telecommunications industry in South Africa was influenced by communication skills, technical skills, education skills, leadership skills, interpersonal skills and negotiating skills.Item Employee perceptions of project management at the Durban University of Technology(2012-10-16) Perumal, Manoshni; Wallis, Malcolm Alan HenworthProject Management for many years have been conducted using a traditional model with the focus being on time, cost and quality and its overall success on managing the organizations more effectively. Organisations are moving towards the use of a more modernistic approach where the focus is being extended to include cost, time, quality and linked to the strategic objectives, reward and recognition systems and building teams. The goals of the project must be communicated to all those who are involved in its implementation in order to ensure project success. Project managers who get people to want to do what they want by sharing their purpose, vision, and values also establish emotional and intellectual ties that result in sustained commitment. As the demand for project management increases, so does the use of tools and techniques. Project management offers a very structured approach to managing projects. The success of a project will be determined on the ability of the project manager to plan and develop a project, to implement, monitor and control and evaluate the project progress. DUT is faced with situation where there is an enormous demand by staff to participate in project management training. Many of these staff are directly involved in project management whilst others have requested this training as part of their capacity building drive. This study examines the perception of staff members who have attended the project management training with a view to making recommendations on how to improve project management at DUT. It also demonstrates the evaluation of the facilitator, the course content as well as the project management’s relatedness to the demographic profile of the University sample and presents and presents the perceptions of the respondents to the questionnaire. The method of research was largely quantitative and enabled comparison to be quantified. A self-administered closed-response questionnaire was adapted and used to obtain the information required. The study further investigated the staff members’ perception on project failure in respect of lack of user involvement, long timescales, failure to track the progress of projects, no formal change control, inadequately training project managers, poor leadership, cultural misalignment, poor planning and inadequate tracking and reporting. The dissertation makes recommendations on the project management course programme and the critical role of the project manager and the project team.Item Managing tacit knowledge in a hi-tech learning organisation(2005) O'Neill, Shawn; Pankhurst, RowenaProject managers are faced with the challenge of matching skills to a task rather than merely assigning people to a job. If these skills are not readily available, the project may not be able to be executed with the desired level of quality and timescales may not be met. Nowadays, organisations need to respond faster to market requirements than before due to increased competition and rapid advances in technology. Coupled to this is the trend for human resources to be more mobile, as lifelong commitment to an organisation becomes a thing of the past. These two trends present modern organisations with the requirement that their human resources require increasing levels of skills, yet they are faced with the risk that these skills may be lost due to their mobility. Organisations, therefore, need to understand what their core competencies are and ensure that these competencies are developed such that the organisation retains an adequate supply of core skills. The aim of the study is to identify the core competencies and associated skills within an organisation and devise a method whereby these competencies and skills can be measured and duplicated such that core knowledge is retained and developed within the organisation.Item An investigation into the criteria for project success within Transnet(2006) Pillay, ReneeProject Management is the wave of the future. This discipline and its evolution continues to be one of the principal means by which operational and strategic changes are managed in the enterprise. The importance of Project Management for organisational success will expand, rather than wane, in years to come. Projects, particularly large scale complex ones with multiple stakeholders, are failing at alarming rates despite a wide spectrum of efforts to solve the problem. The lack of meaningful results and outcomes is due, in part, to the fact that organizations tend to operate on a set of unproven assumptions concerning project objectives, business requirements, user expectations, motivations, agendas, schedules, costs and time frames. The management dilemma is that Transnet has committed R 65 billion to projects in the hope of developing its core businesses to that of world-class standards as a logistics service provider in South Africa. Transnet’s capital project division, Protekon, is responsible for managing the projects committed to this R 65bn capital expenditure. Transnet’s perception of Protekon’s failure to successfully deliver projects could result in appointments of external consultancies such as Hatch McDougal and Guba (HMG – an engineering consultant firm). Whereas, previously, Protekon was the monopoly service provider of engineering and project management skills within Transnet, Transnet’s sub-divisions appear to be utilizing outside consultancies more frequently. The reason for procuring engineering and consultancy services external to Transnet, among others, is the perception that Protekon is performing poorly in delivering successful projects. The outsourcing of work, fuelled by the negative perception of Protekon’s performance, directly impacts on the profitability of Protekon in the short to medium term. The objective of this dissertation was firstly to investigate the effect of Protekon’s involvement in Transnet’s project success; and secondly, to recommend strategies to improve the rate of project success, that could be applied within Transnet and Protekon.