Project Charter development of Merck | Sample Research Report

February 25, 2023February 27, 2023 Mathews

Background to the Project

Studies indicate that project leadership is about encouraging the project team so that they can perform their best and still be motivated. However, this needs a great combination of verbal and non-verbal communications and also efficient leadership skills. Project Charter is considered to be a foundational document which starts the project and responsible for guiding the project manager and team towards the positive progress of the project (Chung & Crawford, 2016). The key agenda of this document is to explain the project in a precise and good way so that it can be shared with other key stakeholders of the project. The project is about the agency issues at the One Global Headquarters at Merck and how these were a major challenge to deal with. It was a challenge for the company to cope with a complex and uncertain environment and deal with agency related issues including goal conflict, information asymmetry and opportunistic behaviour. But it is vital to understand that the management of relationships is a crucial element for the success of any project. The project is about developing an effective procurement strategy and process of one key work package through a collaborative approach (Unterhitzenberger, 2020). This aims at developing relationships between the principal, client, agent and the contractor. There were many challenges faced in the project related to agency related issues and also developing skills for designing proper procurement strategies considering these issues in a complicated project environment.

Reasons for the Project

This project is undertaken to establish a new brand to position Merck as an innovative science and technology firm due to the fact that there was previous analysis conducted which indicated that the culture of the firm was not good. There was a need for transformative change in the culture of the company due to which a new program has to be established, One Global Headquarters. The architecture of the firm especially at the headquarters communicated an efficient message to the stakeholders and indicated that there was a need for transformative change as well. The OGHQ project comprises 90 interpredent projects of several sizes, shapes and forms at the headquarters.

The focus of the project will be determining the agency related issues and also developing strategies for coping with those issues in an effective manner.

Project Objectives

The project objectives are as follows.

To determine the agency related issues in the client-contractor relationships
To develop strategies for coping with agency related issues in the client-contractor relationships.
To operate proper strategies for complicated projects
To determine benefits and weaknesses of different approaches for this project

Constraints, Limitations and Risks

There are various constraints, limitations and risks associated with the project. However, it is vital to determine the issues associated with the project. These issues provide a better indication of the constraints and risks.

Goal conflict- the first limitation of the project is the goal conflict due to which every party tends to follow their own interest. As the goals of the team members differ, it is due to this the project might not have effective collaboration of the people.
Opportunistic attitude: Another limitation of the project is that the parties operate in an opportunistic way due to which the goals cannot be achieved. They focus on exploiting the situations by increasing their economic self-interest.
Information asymmetry: The limitation of the project is the inefficient alignment of information. This is due to the fact that the principal and agent do not have access to the same information due to which they cannot achieve common goals.
Trust issue: The stakeholders of the project lack trust. However, principal-agent relationships are crucial and vital for the success of the firm.
Evaluating performance of contractors: The principal cannot validate the performance of the contractor. As a result of this, they cannot validate if the information is right or wrong.

These issues make it tough for the project managers to achieve the goals of the project.

The constraints of the project are as follows.

The miscoordination between the project team members is one of the constraints. It is not possible to achieve the project objectives until there is proper coordination between the team members.
There is an inefficient culture in the firm due to the top management not supportive.

Leadership structure (project manager and his or her senior aides: list the roles and explain what each does in the project. You need to cite 4 roles)
The project managers of the project are extremely talented. The project managers are supported by a team of experts who work internally and externally.

Project manager: he is a qualified architecture who has worked on various architectural projects before. He is trusted by the project team members due to his competency and also huge knowledge of handling many construction projects. The project manager is expected to show strong leadership due to the fact that there are already many internal issues in the organisation (de Oliveira & Rabechini, 2019). The issues should be resolved by the project manager. The project manager leads a team of several aides who provide adequate support to him so that the project objectives can be achieved.

The senior aides of the project manager are as follows.

Project leader: Another critical individual for the project is project leader, who is a senior aide for the project manager. He has the responsibility for the building design and also construction management.
Structural engineer: another senior aide for the project manager is structural engineer, who is responsible for finding ways for making the designs feasible and affordable and also ensuring that the norms comply with the building regulations. He has extensive experience of managing challenging designs.
Civil engineer: Another key aide in the project is Civil engineer, who is responsible for construction management in the project. The civil engineers are external as well as internal to examine every aspect of the construction project. They ensure that all the important regulations of the project are followed.
External civil engineer: There is an external civil engineer in the team as well who provides aid to the project manager from outside of the organisation. He will be responsible for taking care of the engineering practices from outside.

Project risks and their mitigation

The project risks and their mitigation strategies are as under.

Inefficient culture: The first risk for the project is lack of support from the management and team members due to inefficiency in the culture of the firm. The culture of the organisation is not transformative due to which the stakeholders do not communicate and employees do not have much power to improvise (Eskerod & Huemann, 2013). Rather they are not creative and even the managers do not encourage them to be creative. In such an instance, this construction process can be a failure. There is a need for providing efficient culture to the team members. There should be a transformative culture for motivating the team members to be extremely committed to their work. They should focus on creativity and innovation for achieving the project objectives.

Inefficiency of team members: Another risk for the project is the inefficiency of the team members. It is possible that the project etam does not show required discipline during the project. For this, it is vital to cope with this by providing a code of conduct to the team members in the starting only. This will ensure that the team members do not show any type of indiscipline during the project and be committed to their project. Any team member who show indiscipline should be punished so that he does not repeat it for maintaining the efficiency of the project in an effective manner. This will result in achieving the project outcomes.

Project stakeholders and how to interact with them
The key stakeholders of the project are employees,

Management: The key stakeholder of the project is management of the firm. The top management of the company include CEO, VPs, directors and various other senior officials. They are responsible for directing strategies and plans for this construction project. It is vital to have their support as it is easy in such cases to recruit the efficient staff, acquire raw material for the construction and also get approvals for the capital investment. The top management develops proper plans and key milestones for the project. Also, they provide proper information about the project (Eskerod, Huemann & Savage, 2015). It is vital to keep them informed about the risks and impacts of the project.

Project team: Another crucial stakeholder is the project team. However, the project team for this project is highly competent though there are several issues within them. The project team includes project leader, civil engineer, structural engineer etc. all the stakeholders of the project coordinate so that project objectives can be achieved. However, it is ensured that the issues within the team can be resolved.

Customers: Another key stakeholder is customers. There are internal as well as external stakeholders. The internal customers are people within the firm who are customers for this project. They can approve the project or reject it. It is vital for the project manager to establish cordial relations with internal customers and also negotiate, clarify and provide deliverables. The project manager ensures that the issues and concerns of the customers are rectified. Internal customers may be dissatisfied when there is clarity about what they need and they do not get a proper project charter document (Huemann, Eskerod & Ringhofer, 2016). It is vital to provide them with the documentation they need to convey all important things. On the contrary, external customers are the people outside the firm who will be impacted by the project. The project should be able to cope with the needs of internal as well as external customers. However, there is a need to focus on issues and challenges posed by changing needs of these customers as well.

These are crucial stakeholders of the project. It is vital for the project manager to ensure that these stakeholders are kept well-informed. Also, the project manager should take proper feedback from them from time to time to ensure that their needs are effectively fulfilled (Mok, Shen & Yang, 2015). This can result in the success of the project in an appropriate way. As a project manager, it is vital to ensure that the communication with these stakeholders is efficient. Different strategies need to be followed for keeping them informed. As a result of this, this can help in achieving the project objectives in an effective way.

The vision of the project and the type of project team culture you wish to promote in your team

The current culture of the team is not transformative due to the various agency related issues in the organisation. However, this type of culture is not at all welcomed. As a project manager, it is vital to have a transformative culture so that team members stay committed and satisfied about their work (Unterhitzenberger, 2020). The vision of the project is to achieve the project objectives and eliminate any internal issues. It is crucial that all the project team members have a common vision so that the process of achieving that vision can be easy. There should be a team culture where communication holds highest priority. Studies indicate that the communication is vital for an effective culture so the project manager has to take strategies to cope with cultural differences. The project stakeholders should share a common language so that the communication does not slow down and information can be efficient. Besides communication, another important component of a transformative culture is the adaption, the project team should be able to adapt to various situations well. There can be various situations where the etam has to work. If the culture will be transformative, they will be able to collaborate easily and stay motivated. Overall, this type of culture is needed in the organisation where the focus is on encouraging innovation and creativity in the team and also encouraging them to communicate with each other as much as possible to get best outcomes.

References

Chung, K. S. K., & Crawford, L. (2016). The role of social networks theory and methodology for project stakeholder management. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 226, 372-380.

de Oliveira, G. F., & Rabechini Jr, R. (2019). Stakeholder management influence on trust in a project: A quantitative study. International Journal of Project Management, 37(1), 131-144.

Eskerod, P., & Huemann, M. (2013). Sustainable development and project stakeholder management: What standards say. International Journal of Managing Projects in Business.

Eskerod, P., Huemann, M., & Savage, G. (2015). Project stakeholder management—Past and present. Project Management Journal, 46(6), 6-14.

Huemann, M., Eskerod, P., & Ringhofer, C. (2016). Rethink!: Project Stakeholder Management. Project Management Institute, Incorporated.

Mok, K. Y., Shen, G. Q., & Yang, J. (2015). Stakeholder management studies in mega construction projects: A review and future directions. International Journal of Project Management, 33(2), 446-457.

Unterhitzenberger, C. (2020). Resolving agency issues in client-contractor relationships: The Merck Innovation Center. Accessed on 27/11/2020.