Project management is a broad term that encompasses many types of activities. The simplest form involves scheduling, organizing, and conducting work in time to achieve results. Project management varies based on the type of activity being accomplished. As outline on a PRINCE2 Course Glasgow.
A project is typically initiated to address a specific need in society. A need that no other business service has addressed. Projects are about contributing in specific and novel ways. A project aims at making a difference in society. The main difference between a project and business as usual is action is taken to address a need in society. But it is the difference that makes the difference in most cases.
To choose a specific project, the subject may be a particular problem in society, a specific sector of society interested in technical development, or a problem (or an opportunity) that new developments in technology offer for society. Various factors such as demographics, social issues, technological applications, and other causes contribute to the project initiative and may cause need due to a solution.
Various steps are involved in project management. These steps include initiating, planning, executing, monitoring, and closing the project. Beginning these steps are oriented with a specific need in society. Drafting up a project plan is a method of putting together a project plan. Once a proper plan is instituted, five essential steps must be followed: initiating, planning, executing, monitoring, and closing.
These five steps are dictated by organizational goals and objectives and are usually broken down into even simpler plans. Managers with project management duties must effectively communicate and coordinate planning, activities, resources, goods, services, and the entire project. Communication flow is likely to be cut short if projects are not managed effectively because managers must also coordinate in various levels of the work process, including planning, designing, and screening; doing and developing; monitoring, assessing, and controlling; executing, controlling, and reviewing; and closing.
Project management methods include project structure, project life cycle, and quality control.
The planning activity provides a framework for the organization to take advantage of a discipline in planning and control that is generally termed management by objectives. Such tools include job costing and costing, time and quantity, billing and billing/billing-to-cash, and cost-plus-profit measurement. Project management establishes an environment for developing project processes (goals and objectives) with stated and understood goals and objectives. This critical step provides the structure upon which the resulting structure of the project can be engineered.
The project life cycle may be thought of as a series of steps, completed at different rates while maintaining a viable scheduled for launch, on-pinned goals and destiny, and partnership and begin-over if necessary. The project life cycle comprises five phases: initiation, planning, operations, execution (or development), and monitoring and reviewing in the completion.
Like its name, management by objectives is a technique that enables management to ascertain performance against established targets and goals. As the name implies, the technique calls for management to set out many easily attained objectives. However, management by objective is discouraged because it encourages ambitious objectives based on business plans (and cash flow, too) that are not attainable.
The project life cycle contains several phases or stages, including initiation, during which managers plan and delegate objectives, resources, and personnel; analysis, which assesses strengths and weaknesses of the project through a series of questions and trials, assumptions identification, and completion, and evaluation, which calls for a realistic assessment of successful and monitored objectives.
