How to maintain effective accountability in project management Essay

How to maintain effective accountability in project management - Essay Example Hence, since most projects are implemented by teams whose heart is performance delivery, project managers need to be accountable to their teams and other project shareholders by ensuring they are empowered and dynamic. Accountability is undoubtedly one of the most important factors involved in the critical path of ensuring project managers account for the efforts of his or her team. The need for accountability in project management is to make sure that all finances and project resources are well utilized throughout a project life cycle (Barron & Barron, 2011). Hence, the ability of project managers to easily avail project data to the clients is important for ensuring good client relationships are maintained as well as establishing trust in the used methodologies. Therefore, accountability is very important to the involved teams because it ensures accountability is kept amongst project team members, a situation which prevents resentment in the project as well as helping to maintain mo rale (Gunlach, 2009). However, in order to make sure that accountability is maintained in project management there are issues which must be focused on throughout the project period. Firstly, one of such things involves maintaining effective communication within the project team and other stakeholders such as the sponsors or clients (Barron & Barron, 2011). Thus, since project management is usually a team effort, emphasis should always be placed on collaboration and communication in order to make sure everyone involved in the project can appropriately account for the allocated resources such as funds, labour, time, and so on. The significance of communication on maintaining effective accountability in management of projects is because it allows fast and easy process of making enquiries where some issues are not well understood. In addition, it also facilitates easy way of responding to concerns raised by colleagues in the project team as well as sponsors of the project or clients. Th erefore, in order to ensure accountability throughout the life cycle of a project, effective communication should be emphasized on because it is the only most important tool for the manager of the project and his or her team members (Gunlach, 2009). This is due to the fact that apart from helping in addressing concerns by team members and clients it also facilitates an easy way of addressing other obstacles to the project such as overlapping responsibilities, changes in project scope, complex integration as well as decentralization of the decision-making processes all of which pose potential conflicts in the project (Ten Step, n.d.). Secondly, maintaining effective accountability in management of any project requires establishment of the necessary project controls whereby planning plays the most significant role (Barron & Barron, 2011). This is mainly because it has been ascertained through experience, that planning for a project long before it commences lays the groundwork for acco untability from the project managers and project team as well as ensuring successful completion of the project. Thus, maintaining effective accountability in management of any project and its successful implementation and performance are highly depended on appropriate planning (Gunlach, 2009). In addition, execution of a project is