What is Project Management?

What is a Project?

The project is a temporary activity that exists to produce a defined result. Each project will have its own agreed and unique goals, along with a project plan, budget, schedule, deliverables, and tasks. A project may also involve individuals from various teams within an entity brought together to fulfill a specific objective.

What is Project Management?

Project management may be defined as the implementation of suitable processes and principles to initiate, plan, implement and oversee the implementation of new programmes or improvements within the organization. Project management is different from normal company management, which is a continual process. It involves the creation of a new set of tasks in order to meet the goals or objectives agreed.

Key Components of project management are:

• Time: Scheduling is a set of techniques to develop and present schedules that show when work is to be completed.
• Cost: How are the necessary funds raised and finances managed?
• Scope: What are the developments or improvements that the project will bring?
• Quality: The standard for the results of the project.

The increase or decrease of one of these components will have an effect on the others.

For example, reducing the time allotted to finish the project would also limit the amount of work that can be completed (scope), which will impact the project's quality and cost.

Project manager responsibilities

Project management is known within an organization as a separate business function, and project managers have unique responsibilities and duties to fulfil their project objectives. The project manager will identify and direct the project, lead the project team, and assess how to handle the job on the basis of considerations such as project type, business needs, and the experience of project colleagues.

Project manager skills

Project managers are responsible for implementing the tasks they are working on. It includes a wide variety of skills, including effective verbal and written communication, teamwork, preparation, problem-solving, and project management. It also includes negotiation and time. As the project manager's job now extends beyond the execution of the simple project schedule. In addition to these traditional skills, they still need good customer relationships and business skills.

Core components

The core components of project management are:

• Defining the project, including the need for it and its benefits.
• Defining the project resources, the phases of each stage and the overall timeline, including the standard needed for the phases and the end of the project.
• Prepare a business case to identify costs and to justify the required investment.
• Develop an overall project management plan and oversee the implementation.
• Manage all known risks, plan to deal with unforeseen threats, fix issues, and ensure current logs.
• Monitor the project plan and make sure that all procedures are reported and reports are produced.
• Manage the project budget and stress any deviations from agreed tolerances, and highlighting an early stage when the budget is surpassed by a project.
• Maintain connections with all project members in order to ensure that everyone is aligned.
• Close the project when it is finished or when it is abandoned and complete the appropriate documentation.

When to use project management

Let's consider some points.

• Projects are separate from normal business activities since they normally involve a group of people, often interdepartmental. They work together on a temporary basis to collaborate on a specific activity with a series of particular goals. Teamwork is the secret to a successful project.
• Project management would rely on the defined goal and resources that should be allocated to maximize the chances of achieving the goals of the project. We need to remember that effective management is the key to success.
• The size and scope of the project would determine the necessary resource level and define the expertise required by the delegated project manager.

Project Management processes

Let's discuss the process involved in the project management.

Monitoring

Planning is a natural feature of every project's initial process. Tracking should begin early in the planning process. It will be used later to revisit the method and define learning and respond to plans from start to finish. Issues such as scheduling, schedule, and distribution of resources should be tracked, as this will provide early indicators of a project that might deviate from the plan. If the concerns are found, it is easy to make the modifications necessary to get the project back on track or return within tolerances of project management.

Control

To fix any issues or problems, project managers will need to exert some control. The lack of control will certainly affect the results of the project. In order to oversee project tolerances, it also involves risk assessment.

Communication

As with most things, effective communication is the key to success. Often, issues can be completely avoided or dealt easily by transparent and truthful contact. Oral contact is necessary and efficient under the right conditions, but written and recorded communication is also needed to be part of the project strategy, in particular to identify areas where the project has failed or has been especially successful.

People management

The Project Manager shall be responsible for managing the work of those involved with the project. It is also responsible for handling the operations and monitoring the risks. There will be several management levels in a complex project, which should be managed consistently and transparently.

Project management phases

Initiation

The project should be defined in the first phase of the project, including the development of a business case to support the conduct of the project. It will remain at the core of the project and ensure that the aim is to achieve the outcomes mentioned above. The business case should explicitly specify what the goal of the project is to achieve, where and under what budget, and set the agreed tolerances. It can be used as a guideline for any proposals for a potential shift. The business case should also specify who, at what point, for how long and what their roles and duties would be included in the project.

Requirements

This documentation describes the objectives in more detail. The project will include deadlines and any restrictions. It should also describe how the project can be considered to be effective in accordance with the requirements of all stakeholders.

Planning

Details of how the project will run, how it will be handled, and the level of control and communication should be included in the project plan.

All tasks related to the project should be planned in such a way as to avoid duplication of effort. You also need to ensure that the stages of the project are in the right order. For example, if the project is to create a fish pond in a garden, it is not feasible to schedule the distribution of fish until the pond is full of water.

Execution

Those involved in the project should be given sufficient information to fulfill their part of the project. This should include time frames, deadlines and how to evaluate and measure progress.

Closure

Projects are usually closed when they have successfully achieved their goals. It will be closed if the final plan changes, if funding is lost, or if it becomes clear that the project is no longer feasible. Formal ventures can continue to benefit from feedback and can be used to determine lessons learnt through the project-good and bad. The mistakes made are a key element of the learnings, which can be taken into account for future projects.