Organizational Planning

Correct Answer: Create a rotating meeting schedule to fairly distribute the inconvenience of attending meetings outside of normal working hours.

The most efficient approach to resolve the issue of coordinating meeting schedules across different time zones would be to 'Create a rotating meeting schedule to fairly distribute the inconvenience of attending meetings outside of normal working hours'. This approach ensures every team member shares the burden of occasional off-hours meetings, but still maintains the ability to meet and make decisions collectively. 'Only scheduling meetings during your own working hours' is not practical if team members are spread across different time zones and could potentially lead to some members attending meetings outside their usual working hours. This approach can breed resentment among the team and hence, it is not recommended 'Avoiding meetings and communicating solely through emails and task assignments' can lead to miscommunication and confusion. While it may be convenient, it doesn't encourage active teamwork or prompt decision-making Lastly, 'Arranging face-to-face meetings to ensure efficient communication' is impractical for a virtual team spread across different timezones and may incur high cost and travel time Therefore, creating a rotating schedule that can adapt to everyone's timezones is the best approach in this situation.

Correct Answer: Establish a Responsibility Assignment Matrix

The best approach to ensuring that roles are clearly defined and process boundaries set in a project management scenario, particularly in a complex and risky project, is to 'Establish a Responsibility Assignment Matrix'. This tool is used to provide a clear correlation between work packages or activities and the project team. It helps to avoid any confusion about who is responsible for what in the project. The other options are not optimal. 'Allocating tasks randomly to team members' does not ensure that the right skills are matched to the right tasks, and could lead to inefficiency. Similarly, allowing team members to 'choose their roles' could also lead to mismatched skills and tasks and potential conflict within the team. Lastly, to 'start the project and adjust roles on the go' is a risky strategy that might lead to chaos and confusion, with potential adverse impacts on project performance.

Correct Answer: Create a detailed Work Breakdown Structure

The best solution when handling a project with a tight timeline and an out of sync team is to 'Create a detailed Work Breakdown Structure'. Here's why: A Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) helps in breaking down a project into manageable chunks, offering a clearer picture of the tasks that have to be completed. This encourages team coordination and harmony. The other options are not suitable for the following reasons: 'Let the team figure it out; autonomous is best' - Though autonomy can be beneficial, in this case with tight timelines, it can lead to chaos as the project needs everyone to work towards a common goal. 'Ask upper management to force a solution' - This could demotivate the team and does not assure that it will keep the project on track. 'Cancel the project and start a new one' - This is not a solution to the given problem. Starting a new project does not guarantee the team will be in sync and will follow the same approach, plus it's not cost-effective.