Project Management- A Step Closer To Your Goals

Let’s start with the basics, a project is unique, it is not a routine operation, but a specific set of operations designed to accomplish a goal. Project management, then, is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements. A key factor that distinguishes project management from just 'management' is that it has this final deliverable and a finite time span, unlike management which is an ongoing process. Because of this, a project professional needs a wide range of skills; often technical skills, and certainly people management skills, and good business awareness. Integration, scope, human resource, shareholder management, time, cost quality, communication, risk management are all elements of project management.

 Why, when, who?

To answer the first part of the question, project management when done efficiently provides a greater likelihood of achieving the desired result, ensuring efficient and best value use of resources and satisfies the differing needs of the project’s stakeholders.

Projects are different from a company’s day-to-day activities and require a team of people to come together temporarily to focus on specific objectives. As a result, effective teamwork is central to successful projects. Project management is concerned with managing discrete packages of work to achieve specific objectives. The way they work is managed depends upon a wide variety of factors. The objectives could be expressed as benefits, say for example reduction in production costs, or strategies, say for example increase in share price within the end of three years.

As for who needs project management, in general, everyone manages projects at some point, formally or informally! Remember organizing your friend’s birthday party. You see, you already have a taste. More formally, projects crop up in all industries and businesses, product manufacture, building and construction, finance and law, IT, and so on.

Facts That Matter

1. It is people who deliver projects, not processes or systems.

2. The willingness of employees and managers to accept the changes and recommendations provided by the projects is as important as other topics related to project management.

3. A project is a temporary organization, established by its base organization to carry out an assignment on its behalf.

4. The tailoring of project methodology provides an adequate level of control to guarantee the achievement of a successful project.