Managing Risks and Distortions in Project Management Case Study

Identifying Key Risks and Strategic Options for P3M

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Introduction 

This research is aiming to give information on the perspective of different critical and most effective key distortions as well as different risks that might occur for P3M. These risks and key distortions are affecting their stakeholder that ensures they face them in future throughout their working conditions in their project management and programmes. It includes key risk factors of Brexit and its impact, issues of Industry 4.0 and the future of working conditions or Jobs and Skills in 2030. These three scenarios are developing a rationale for this research to identify the key risk factors and their impact on P3M and its stakeholder. STEEPLE and SWOT Analysis help the reader to understand the key distortions that can affect the project management activities of the P3M Company, it requires mitigating the key distortions and risk factors for getting success shortly.

These factors help to recognise the key threats and opportunities in project management and its strategic application in near future. The main body of this research includes the identification of the key distortions from the mentioned STEEPLE factors and SWOT factors that helps to establish key features and key performances in the project management working conditions. It discusses the critical evaluation of the key distortions risk and impacts on P3M to conduct effective project management activities. This research mainly recognises the key factors that are related to macro-environmental risk factors, CQT and Iron Triangle issues, strategic drift risk, and uncertainty creation within the project by the driving changes and freedom of movement of people.

Main Body

STEEPLE Analysis

STEEPLE Factors	STEEPLE Analysis	STEEPLE Impact
Social	Education rate - high (approximately 99%) Energy consumption - 309.20 billion kWh (Worlddata.info, 2022) Cultural and trending embrace - high	Positive
Technological	Adoption of automated technologies (Digicatapult.org.uk, 2021) Innovation inputs and aspects - high and trending The UK is considered an as high pioneer of digital technology applications and utilisation.	Positive
Economical	Current unemployment rate - 3.6% (Tradingeconomics.com, 2022b) Exchange rate - high (Exchangerates.org.uk, 2022) Inflation rate - high (9.12%)	Positive
Environmental	Air pollutants in various proportions in the area (Aqicn.org, 2022) Wind speeds - are high and record-breaking (122 mph) (Turner, 2022) Frequent climate-changing activities are shown in various parts of the country (Metoffice.gov.uk, 2022)	Neutral
Political	Brexit is a bitter negotiation deal between the UK and the EU that impacts the overall business performance. (Bbc.com, 2020) Foreign Trade Rate - 55.5%	Negative
Legal	Workplace discriminations are present It involves "The Employment Rights Act 1996", "The Control of Pollution Act 1974", "The Planning and Energy Act 2008" and "The Weeds Act 1959" (Field.org.uk, 2022)	Neutral
Ethical	A strong relationship between employees in society. · Cultural and behavioural involvement in the working conditions	Neutral

Table 1: STEEPLE Analysis

The above table is showing details of the STEEPLE factors that help to identify the requirements of the resources for mitigating the raised distortions and key issues in the country. These factors are affecting the P3M or the Project, Programme and Portfolio management to gain a competitive advantage and success in future. It helps to identify some key distortions or issues that require immediate resolutions. It has identified key distortions related to the Brexit situation, Technological resourcing factors, the Unemployment rate, Workplace discrimination and higher foreign trade rate and exchange rate. These key factors need to identify their effective changes and procedure for increasing effectiveness in project programmes and portfolio management. 

SWOT Analysis

Strengths	Weaknesses
Strong management skills Financial data understanding Strong communication and leadership skills Decision-making and strategic application in the projects (Mansell et al. 2020) Experts in processing and system development procedure	Challenges in outsourcing the requirements Different time zones in different project management (Arifudin et al. 2022) Lack of targeted messages and marketing campaigns Customers service approaches are weak
Opportunities	Threats
Advanced technological applications in project management Committee meetings for developing the top 5 project list (Danchenko et al. 2021) The utilisation of effective communication and interaction with team members of the project management	Sudden directive changes through innovation Negative influence on the entire group by the early adopters (Abdulsalam, 2020)

Table 2: SWOT Analysis

The above table is illustrating details of the strengths and weaknesses of P3M and its stakeholders facing during the development of project management activities. It informs about the threats and opportunities of the organisation and its stakeholders to meet their organisational goals. The strengths of this organisation are strong management skills, financial data understanding, strong communication and leadership skills, decision-making and strategic application in the projects and expertise in processing and system development procedures. As per the view of BENHARRAT et al. (2020), the strong qualities of the organisation help the stakeholders to invest in the organisation and to proceed with effective project management activities to get success in future. It involves weaknesses of challenges in outsourcing the requirements, different time zones in different project management, lack of targeted messages and marketing campaigns and customers service approaches are weak.

These are requirements for the P3M to recover soon and to apply some strategies against these weaknesses for increasing the strength of the organisation. As per the view of Sanchez et al. (2019), identification of opportunities and taking advantage of the opportunities are necessary for the organisation to increase their success in future and for project management qualities these are important to initiate innovation in different project innovations. The opportunities include advanced technological applications, committee meetings for developing the top 5 project list and the utilisation of effective communication and interaction with team members of the project management. The threats to the organisation are recognition of sudden directive changes through innovation in every project management activity and negative impact on the fundamental group by the early adopters within the P3M and its stakeholders. 

Identified Key Distortions

Key Distortions: Brexit situation

This situation is affecting the decision-making procedure for the organisation that makes a delay in the decision-making procedure that makes the overall project a delay. Therefore, project managers and leaders of the organisation are attempting to mitigate the threat of a "talent shortage" with other innovative and creative solutions. As per the view of Pachankis, (2022), project managers are thinking about the effect of the Brexit situation on data protection regulation, currency rates and labour markets. Prioritisation level of mitigating risk factors for executing the challenges at the portfolio level for project management is required. 

Key Distortions: Technological resourcing factors

The establishment of technological factors in project portfolio management is developing effective challenges for properly resourcing the technological equipment for better involvement and execution of the project management activities in the P3M organisation and its stakeholders. As per the view of Caciora et al. (2021), leadership activities in project programming and portfolio management activities play a vital role in resourcing the required equipment for ensuring innovation in the project. Technological applications play an effective role in innovation initiation throughout project portfolio management in different organisations. 

Key Distortions: The Unemployment rate

This key distortion is affecting the organisation mainly for proceeding with innovative and creative project management deals with its stakeholders. Human resource management is a crucial part of any organisation to get proper success in the market segment and to achieve an effectively competitive market. As per the view of Mrowinski et al. (2019), the unemployment rate is directly affecting the stakeholders of P3M for reducing its human resources in different organisations. It requires the association of different training programmes for mitigating the issues related to the unemployment rate in the organisation. Effective communication approch and procedure is another way for mitigating the unemployment issues within the organisation. 

Key Distortions: Workplace discrimination

Workplace discrimination is affecting the overall project management activities by not completing the task within time and not fulfilling the overall requirement of the project management. Lack of interaction among employees needs to develop a strategic application for establishing an effective communicational approch in the organisation. As per the view of Huang and Poore (2019), workplace discriminations are of different kinds and requires the association of proepr resources and interaction for the employees to execute the working conditions effectively. P3M organisation is getting affected by workplace discriminations that needs to be overcome quickly for achieving success in the market. 

Key Distortions: Higher foreign trade rate 

Political factors are impacting negatively with higher foreign trade rates in the country and the organisation is not capable to expand the project management business in the international countries and the market. As per the view of Wang et al. (2019), the development of new foreign trade policies by the government can help the project and portfolio management programmes to ensure success in further future. Foreign trade policies require to demonstrate a transformational divergence from before policies in numerous practices, driving them flexible, futuristic and dynamic to manage the "ever-changing requirements" of the trading community and the international business environment. 

Key Distortions: Higher exchange rate

The economic factor of the higher exchange rate in the country is impacting deeply the business organisation to expand the project management businesses in the market segment. As per the view of Caciora et al. (2021), higher exchange rates makes barriers to developing strong relationships with international stakeholders and stopping developing deals with them. P3M needs to apply strategically in international project management for gaining a competitive advantage and success in future. 

Risk and Impact

This part of the study deals with the evaluation of the different kinds of risks and impacts of each of those identified distortions. However, some relevant key concepts and theories are included for gaining a clear knowledge about those aspects. 

Technological resourcing factors 

This identified distortion might not seem to be much effective for the stakeholders but might impact immensely. As per the view of Temel and Durst (2021), indecent resourcing might result in different kinds of risks information miss placing, technological failure, and disruption of business. Thus P3M can face these as these technological risks bring up different kinds of security-related incidents and even sometimes brutal cyber attacks. However, this will then consider a "macro-environmental distortion" to the project management of the overall tasking. As a matter of fact, this brings some noticeable changes at the time of placing the project planning. So, some strategic changes are needed to be made in the form of strategic flux for lowering the overall impact of those risks (He, 2019). However, the main impact will be managing the resources and then critically impacting resource depletion. 

Brexit situation

Brexit can therefore be used as a good example of "macro-environmental distortion". However, its uncertainty to the project management is referred to as the uncertainty caused by key distortions. However, the "Brexit equals changes" in the project organizations, for example, P3M, will go through some incremental changes within it. The risk of having a strategic drift is considered to be one of the most important aspects that are identified (Study material). As Brexit is not only one distortion, some internal misbalances can get instituted that will hamper the natural hedge into the approach of the organizations. 

Workplace discrimination 

Alongside the evaluation of the STEEPLE factors that were identified, workplace discrimination was one of them. This mainly impacts the internal resources and the overall working capabilities of the projects. According to the study by Romani et al. (2019) suggests that impacted internal resources can occur at a continuous rate and these impacts the position of the projects. Thus, workplace discrimination is one of the identified "key strategic drivers" that brings changes that get associated with different kinds of risks. Thus this impacts the sustainability of the business and the workflow functions. Hence, this blocks the strategic vision of the workplace and exterminating a strategic approach that comes under project management (Dickens et al. 2019). 

Thus, it can be extrapolated that the impact of these risks brings a set of problems and also helps in defining the strengths and weaknesses. This then can be defined internally within the organization and the associated project. 

Higher foreign trade rate and exchange rate

Having higher foreign trade rates and exchange rates can result in bringing 3 different kinds of risks. As per the view of Avdjiev et al. (2019), the three different kinds of risks associated with "foreign exchange risk" are political transactional risks, translational risks, and economic risks. As a matter of fact, P3M might face these issues that then might impact its stakeholders from which the investors will be the specific ones.

• For example: A foreign risk mainly directs at the overall losses that are made by an "international financial transaction". So, this will then bring up certain situations that might get incurred because of the 'currency fluctuations. From this, the investors get affected and bring several kinds of risks at the time of trading into the international market. Thus, impacting the business engagement that also directs the exporting and importing of products and services to consumers.

Moreover, high foreign exchange rates bring up the major possibility that affects an organization with different variations. As per the view of Turner et al. (2019), variation due to change rates being high, can occur among exchanges occurring between the currency used for transaction and the local currency. Thus, this impacts higher costs of trade processes where the cost of exporting gets higher enough as compared to the cost of importing. Hence, P3M will get impacted as the overall competition gets decreased from the foreign market and will then decrease the demand. This decrease in demand will then further minimize the rate of operations and will decrease the comprehensive "domestic output pricing". Therefore, these are some of the issues that impact an organization, but these can impact in the future also. This will affect P3M and its different kinds of stakeholders due to the drastic changes occurring by the risks. 

Unemployment rate

At first, "risk" is denoted as the "comprehensive expected rate" that helps in defining unemployment. This then can be according to the factors like "long-term unemployment" and "low-retention of the labour force". According to Lahtinen et al. (2020), the unemployment rate is also considered as a percentage of the total labour force present in a given category of individuals when other variables are controlled. So, there can be different kinds of ups and downs, which gets directly related to the business processes. When unemployment occurs, it reduces the demand for the services and the consumption of them. Hence, it becomes indirectly proportional to the buying power of the services, which turns into lowering the profits. 

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Conclusion

The essay concludes the total analysis of Managing projects and programs but puts up a rationale and conducts a literature review. The aim of the designated question set for this paper critically evaluates the set of sine important key distortions and risks, which can emerge from the P3M. However, the aim also puts the effort into critically evaluating from the perspectives of their stakeholders also. Thus each of the risks and key distortions is defined for managing their programmes and projects. However, each of the scenarios allowed in having a complete idea about the strategic rationale and identifies the risks and the key distortions that are associated with it. This includes macro-environmental risks, from the CQT and Iron Triangle, driving change for projects creating uncertainty, "the risk of strategic drift", and "freedom of movement of people". As a matter of fact, it is considered to be a key uncertainty but it is not available for UK projects. 

However, from the case study Covid-19 is also identified s one of the main "macro-environmental distortions". Thus it has been also acting as a main risk to every business that includes project management. Therefore, a STEEPLE and a SWOT analysis had been performed that allowed in gaining a clear about the "key environmental drivers". As a matter of fact, proper risk identification has been performed that allowed in identifying the risk associated. Apart from that, this part will also have some strategic options that can be recommended for addressing the risks and the key impacts. 

• Strategic Option 1: The risk of having a strategic drift is considered to be one of the most important aspects that are identified. So, if the strategic drift fluctuates then the risk is high. So, the risks of strategic drift can be mitigated by encouraging of having diverse perspectives and also bringing innovation. However, having a clear industry benchmarking can help in sorting out the incremental changes that keep on occurring due to strategic drift. Apart from that, if the risk is high then a lot of uncertainty occurs that might bring "frequent transformational changes" into the overall system. As a matter of fact, these "worst-case scenarios" can be due to a strategic demise that then leads to a project failure. Hence, monitoring of performance allows in having a clear idea of both the financial indicators and the project credentials. 
• Strategic Option 2: The projects that create uncertainty due to some driving changes can lead to bringing a key set of different risks. As “Brexit” is not only the one distortion, some internal balances can be created for forming a natural hedge into the approach. This will act as a strategic tendency that will help in adopting some of the "community hedging techniques". This can be done by taking long positions and short positions while having future contracts. 
• Strategic Option 3: One of the major macro-environmental risks and distortions identified was Covid-19. So, in the present time and in the future the strength and the impact of the risk is/will be very much high. This can be easily managed if individuals in project management start to seek more knowledge. This will allow for the development of different kinds of skills and help in delivering project management. Thus it will help in adopting a proactive approach and easily managing unrealistic expectations. 
• Thus these strategic options also help in gaining an idea about some of the strategies that can be used in future directions. 

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