Planning Processes example essay topic

Managing a successful business or organization requires healthy, ongoing leadership and management, planning, product and service development, marketing and financial management. To carry out these practices in a healthy manner, it's important to first understand the basic "territory" in which these practices are carried out. There are four basic functions of management that lend themselves to accomplishing effective management. The focus of this brief is to discuss these management functions and their impact to the system requirements and design for the consumer order entry system for Verizon Communications. Planning is selecting priorities and results (goals, objectives, etc.) and how those results will be achieved. Planning typically includes identifying goals, objectives, methods, resources needed to carry out methods, responsibilities, and dates for completion of tasks.

Examples of planning are strategic planning, business planning, project planning, staffing planning, and advertising and promotions planning. Organizing is allocating and configuring resources to accomplish the preferred goals and objectives establishing during the planning processes. It is also establishing the internal organizational structure of the organization. The focus is on division, coordination, and control of tasks, and the flow of information within the organization. It is in this function that managers distribute authority to jobholders. Leading is establishing direction and influencing people to follow that direction.

An important element in leading is influencing people's behavior through motivation, communication, group dynamics, leadership and discipline. The purpose of leading is to channel the behavior of all personnel to accomplish the organization's mission and objectives while simultaneously helping them accomplish their own career objectives. Controlling is monitoring and adjusting resources and processes to achieve goals and objectives in a highly effective and efficient fashion. It is a four-step process of establishing performance standards based on the organization's objectives, measuring and reporting actual performance, comparing the two, and taking corrective or preventive action as necessary. The control process is cyclical which means it is never finished. Controlling also leads to identification of new problems that in turn need to be addressed through establishment of performance standards and measures.

Within my own organization much of the planning function is performed at a much higher level within management. Executive plans are delivered at various intervals throughout the year. These plans provide us with timeframes and deliverable dates for our development and enhancement process. These plans and dates are always subject to change as economy or market demands dictate.

However, my division must plan our activities and deliverables based on the content of the executive level plans. In our efforts to work within the overall plan organizing and controlling play very important roles. Resources must be allocated for various projects that are to be delivered on a specific date. Most often our commitment dates only allow for a short amount of development time. Controlling and monitoring the progress of the project is critical to its success. Occasionally problems are discovered that were not anticipated and as a result the delivery may be in jeopardy.

When this occurs project managers and development leads are called together to discuss the issue, its impact, and possible solutions. It is these times when everybody involved must be sensitive to the issue and realize that time if of the essence. Effective leadership skills are vital to the situation, it is very important to communicate to the team that this is a team effort and participation and flexibility from everybody is expected. Effective leading and controlling can pull the team together to provide the most effective solution. Sometimes there may even be some options as opposed to only one solution that is acceptable to the client within the timeframe allotted.

Management and supervision in my organization are clearly present. However, is widely known and accepted that without the individual contributors the organization would never meet their objectives. I can proudly say that I am fortunate enough to be part of a division where we have been successful in establishing a harmony between all the members of our development team, including managers, supervisors, and directors.

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