The document discusses the major challenges facing project managers in negotiating or manipulating the project environment. It explains that project managers must understand the cultural, social, political, physical, economic, technological, competitive, and global environments in which a project takes place in order to effectively achieve the project's goals. The ability to integrate an awareness of these various environments is essential for project managers to navigate challenges and influence outcomes positively.

1. ST JOHN’S UNIVERSITY OF TANZANIA
FACULTY OF HUMANITIES AND EDUCATION
GEOGRAPHY DEPARTMENT
COURSE NAME : PROJECT PLANNING AND
MANAGEMENT
COURSE CODE : GE 308
COURSE INSTRUCTOR : Ms MIRU
NATURE OF WORK : INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT
NAME REG No
KIONAUMELA, LIVINGSTONE M. 2008/2639
QUESTION: The major challenge facing project manager now days is how best they can
negotiate or manipulate the project environment. Using explain the
statement.

2. SUBMISION DATE: 27TH MAY 2011, AT 10:00 A.M
Project management is a series of activities embodied in a process of getting things done on the
project done by working with members of the project team and with other people in order to
reach the project schedules, cost and technical performance. In project, process is a series of
action or operations that brings about an end result tat is attaining its cost, schedule and technical
performance objectives (Cleland and Ireland, 2006).
Project management is an art of directing and coordinating human and materials resources
throughout the life of a project by using modern management techniques to achieve pre
determined objective of scope, time quality, time cost and participant (stakeholder) satisfaction
( Wideman, 1990).
Generally Project manager is a person who performs managerial functions of forecasting and
planning, organizing, commanding, motivating, coordinating, and setting stages for
differentiation of managerial activities from the technical activities of the enterprise and all these
are carried out of commitment of resources on the project.
Also wherever the project is taking place, all project managers need to be professionally
qualified and familiar with the local standards and codes. In order for manager to be as accurate
as possible from the start, professional qualification and familiarity with local codes and
standards is essential. Lack of these skills leads the project manager fail to integrate various
project environments for effective attainment of the pre determined goals.
Project environment is the surroundings in which a project is undertaken, and it includes air,
water, land, natural resources pollutions, humans and their interaction that is social, political and
economic both within and outside the project boundaries (Kohli, 2006).
Virtually all project are planned and implemented in a social, economic, and political
environmental context and have intended and unintended positive and negative impacts, so the

3. project Manager should consider project in its cultural social international, political and physical
environmental context1.
Understanding this environment also involves, identifying the project stakeholders and their
ability to affect its successful outcome. And this leads to the possibility of influencing this
environment in a positive way, for the better reception of the change which the project is
designed to introduce. Also project manager must work with people to achieve the best results,
especially in the highly technical and complex environments such as those involving modern day
construction projects (Wideman, 1990).
Cultural and social environment, the team needs to understand how the project affects people
and how people affect the project. This may require an understanding of aspects of the economic,
demographic, educational, ethical, ethnic, religious, and other characteristics of the people whom
the project affects or who may have an interest in the project. The project manager should also
examine the organizational culture and determine whether project management is recognized as a
valid role with accountability and authority for managing the project (Gido and Clement, 2008).
Also under cultural and social environment communication is very important part for the project
successful. Many project managers and team members do not provide enough information to
enough people, along with the lack of an infrastructure or culture for good communication, so
the deficit of the communication make the stakeholders to lose hope in effective participation on
project implementation. In order to have a clear internal and external environment for effective
implementation of the project, proper communication flows for project members and develop a
checklist of what information like reports needs to be conveyed to project participants.
For example there have been the project in Dodoma dealing with rain water harvesting in which
after the completion of the project, the villagers continued in using water collected in natural
depressions or man-made reservoirs but have shown very little interest in adopting the
technology. Also the observation were made from the fact and showed that, although the
benefits of the technology have been very well demonstrated in Dodoma, very few individuals or
villages has adopted the construction of their own reservoirs (Hatibu and Mahoo 1999). This
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4. shows that the project manager faced the challenge to manipulate social environment for the
sustainability of the project by drawing the social interest.
Political environment, project manager needs to be aware of the project boundaries that can be
national, regional, and local laws and customs, as well as the political climate that could affect
the project (Cooke and Tate, 2005). For example the failure of the rain water harvesting project
in Dodoma can be due the lack of regional policy and strategy that supports the development of
rain water harvesting system for crop production (Hatibu and Mahoo 1999).
Physical environment, that is the project will affect its physical surroundings, some team
members should be knowledgeable about the local ecology and physical geography that could
affect the project or be affected by the project (Kohli, 2006). Each project has a specific physical
environment that favors its success or failure. For example establishment of tea plantation in
Dodoma, physical factor will be a major limiting factor due to the fact that, the crop needs high
rainfall with low temperature where have low rainfall and high temperature.
Economic environment that is with price fluctuations of the project inputs, the project manager
needs to be aware economic situation where he / she are establishing the project on how the price
of inputs is stable, doing this helps in making estimation of the cost of the project. In order for
project controls to be effective, the project management team should have regularly scheduled
update meetings (with a consistent structure) and standardized reporting formats. This will help
ensure that information is clear and unaffected by varying ways of tracking and reporting cost
and schedule. Being unaware of the economic situation creates the challenge to the project
manager to manipulate project environment (Verzuh, 2008).
Technological environment, this helps in simplifying the accomplishment of project activities.
Various tools have been developed and have changed the projects environment tremendously and
had brought more comprehensive impacts on projects like information technology including
computer, cellular phones and other productive machines, which had led to the effective storage
and dissemination of information and increase in productivity respectively. So projects manager
needs to be skillful in selecting the technology which is appropriate to the project. And wrong

5. choice of technology will lead to the failure of the project manager to manipulate physical, social
and competitive environment of the project (Nickel, Mchugh, and Mchugh, 2005).
For example dam construction using manual labour will take a long time in its accomplishment
than that which uses capital intensive (machines) which will take short time in tasks
accomplishment.
Competitive environment, here the competition can exist in terms of labour, resources, and
market where the project outputs are going to be consumed. These competitions can be caused
by the presence of many projects which are in need of the same resources, labour, market and
capital. So if the project manager knows about these environments he / she will be able to
manipulate the environment and being able to achieve the intended goals of the project (Nickel,
Mchugh, and Mchugh, 2005). For example private school and government school both need the
same resources, market and capital; this environment makes the school owners to be creative
making sure that their intended goals are achieved within the competitive environment.
The global environment, understanding this environment is very important for the project
manager. For example in a globalized market, many industries are facing a lot of pressures due to
this factor. Tariff barriers are virtually falling and labour has become more mobile. Further, due
to productivity improvements and advantages in economies of scale some foreign firms are
capable of competing with local firms on price, quality and delivery. The impact of these
pressures befalls on project management too (Walker, 1984).
Conclusively, to be effective manager an individual must have management as well as technical
skills, due to the fact that engineers often consider their career limited in the functional
discipline, they look toward project management as career path opportunities. But becoming a
project manager entails learning about psychology, organizational behavior, interpersonal
relations and communications, where all these skills makes the maners to manipulate and
negotiate on various project environment for efficient and effective realization of the pre
determined goals of the Project.

6. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cleland, D.I. and Ireland, L. R. (2006), Project Management: Strategic design and
Implementation, 5th ed. McGraw – Hill Professional New York.
Gido, J. and Clement, J.P. (2008), Successful project management, 4th ed. Cengange Learning,
New York.
Kohli, (2006), Project management handbook. Tata McGraw – Hill Education, New York.
Hatibu, N. and Mahoo, H. (1999) Rainwater harvesting technologies for agricultural
production: A case for Dodoma, Tanzania. Sokoine University of Agriculture Morogoro.
Nickel, W.G., Mchugh, J.M. and Mchugh, S.M. (2005) Understanding Business, 5th ed.
McGraw-Hill Irwin. New York.
Verzuh, E. (2008),The fast forward MBA in Project management, James Wiley and Sons
Walker, A. (1984), “Project Management in Construction”, Granada, London
Wideman, R.M. (1990), Managing the Project Environment, A E W Services, Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada
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