Senior Management has decided to initiate several new produc

Senior Management has decided to initiate several new product development and project management efforts and meets to discuss potential leaders fro the work. The general conclusion from the meeting is that there are too few engineers with project management capability in the plant and that the projects to be initiated will have to wait while HR develops a training program to get more engineers on line to manage projects.

How does Senior Management deal with this lack of proven project managers?

What is the underlying problem?

What kind of training and development process is in order?

What are the next steps?

Solution

1. Senior management is facing a critical issue which is lack of manpower with relevant skills and knowledge. This issue becomes more serious if there are important project in pipe-line which can have impact of organization\'s future. However senior management can follow this route to escape this dilemma -

- While the training program is getting developed and more engineers come on board the existing can start the work and initiate the early proceedings.

- The existing few engineers can be given assurance of incentive and promotion if project get going smoothly.

- These existing will further train and orient the new engineers who will come on board.

This strategy will not only help senior management to go ahead with the project but also a line of trained managers who can manage the newly joined engineers.

2. The main and most important problem which came out here is miscommunication or improper communication between senior management and HR department.

Senior management suddenly decides to go ahead with project and then realizes lack of skilled manpower while HR department don\'t even know organization\'s future plans.

3. Primarily a training and orientation program with all the basic information about the project is under process. This training program will work as a tool-kit for newly joined employee. This training will not only explain processes and plolicies at organizational level but it will also contain deliverables and expected outcome of the job.

4. The next step for the organization should be to create a training module asap and hire engineers so projects get the required pace. In the meanwhile senior management can optimize their existing engineers in a efficient and effective manner to initiate the project.

After this crisis is resolved then senior management and HR department should sit together and work on the future strategies and plan.