All you need to know about what is project management

In today's modern world, project management has become the need of the hour for businesses. We endlessly come across situations where certain project succeeds and some fail. There are plenty of factors that could be the reason for the latter, such as poor leadership, lack of funds and resources, and lack of proper direction for the team. But factually, the prime thing it may be lacking is an outright Project Management.

It's probably universally known that a project is an activity that is shouldered by someone or a group of people to develop a product, service, or desired result by the client.

A project is a provisional entity that has a beginning point and an end point, and thus with defined scope and resources as well. It is an exclusive exercise which has a set of specific operations to accomplish the desired goal. So, a project may consist of people who are in the same or different organizations, or sometimes, they are in different geographical localities.

And each project should be managed perfectly based on delivery time, existing budgets and resources.

What is Project Management?

Project management is the method or application that is deployed for initiating, planning, executing, and supervising people's work in the team for achieving the set goals in time.

Remember, the principal agenda of project management is to ensure that a particular goal is achieved within the given constraints.

It was practised informally in the beginning. But over the years it has emerged as an exciting profession, thereby thrusting professionals to pursue pmp certification and master project management.

The Project Life Cycle

Project management is irrelevant if there is no project life cycle. The project life cycle is a series of actions that must be completed to reach the desired result.

Each project may vary depending on the goals, intent, size, and complexity. But still, all of them follow a congruent life cycle.

Project management consists of 5 phases of a life cycle which are:

1.Initiating

The major activities involved in this phase are:

● Analyzing the business requirement

● Assessing a business's current and historical operational data, counting financial budgets, and reports

● Recognizing the stakeholders and analyzing their roles and impressions

● Discovering stakeholder requirements

● Discerning goals of the project

2. Planning

The chief activities in the planning stage include:

● Creating a planning team

● Analyzing the required output of the project, including quality goals and control measures

● Knowing the tasks to be executed

● Creating a work breakdown framework and drawing their interconnections

● Preparing an estimated chart for equipment, material, labor, and others

● Preparing the project budget

● Creating a schedule for performing all activities in the work breakdown

● Discovering probable threats, risks or problems and developing precautionary responses to these threats

3. Implementing or Executing

Following are the activities undertaken in this phase:

● Allocating required resources to particular phases of project or activities

● Interacting with key participants of the project

● Performing the activities enlisted in the plan

● Regularly updating about the project's progress

4. Monitoring and controlling

This phase includes the following activities:

● Computing the tasks as they are happening

● Observing the project progress carefully and comparing with the plan continuously

● Deploying proper action plans to fix the issues if any

● Reporting constantly to stakeholders

● Jot down the progress and update the plans, if there are any changes in the plan

● Quality checking deliverables according to the project goals

5. Completion or closing

The activities involved in this phase are:

● Releasing quality assured project deliverables

● Recording and archiving important project files used and developed during the whole project

● Administering the project review post-implementation, about the lessons learnt and how can it be used in the future endeavours

Everything that has been discussed above shows that project management is based majorly on the following areas:

● Incorporation

● Opportunities

● Scope

● Cost

● Quality

● Acquirement

● Human Resources

● Discussions

● Risk Management

● Stakeholder management

Benefits of Project Management

With project management, we can professionalize the activities of a project. Project management involves effective techniques that can benefit organizations to achieve desired results. So, the benefit of project management render tools that are designed to:

● Optimization of work schedule

● Finding the issues and bottlenecks

● Easy coordination between the team

● Managing cost and budget on various scenarios

● Regular communication that helps in pacing the work based on delivery deadlines

● It helps to monitor and control the whole project according to the plan

● Creates a real-time plan, based on the resources available

● Document sharing for easy understanding

● Flexible plans that can be altered if there any glitches

Most of the organizations use project management software for professional projects which assists them in gaining all the benefits mentioned above.

Types of Project Management Approach

We have seen a traditional project management approach above, that describes initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and completion or closing. Howbeit, this is not the only approach in use. Over the years, many more approaches were developed. Let us take you through them.

1. Lean Project Management

This approach entitles to reduce time and wastes without trading the quality of the project. This concept is often related to lean manufacturing and lean construction, as they usually deal with bottlenecks and wastage.

2. Critical Chain Project Management

The approach intends on dealing with unpredictable things that come with project management. Also, it takes into consideration that these uncertainties should be handled within the available resources.

3. Iterative Approaches

You probably might know that agile project management is one of the most talked about concepts today. Typically, Agile technology is used in the domains of software development and information technology, and it focuses mainly on people's cooperation and iteration. Several methodologies have been developed based on the agile concepts which include Crystal Clear, Kanban, Extreme Programming, and Scrum.

And finally,

Recently, project management has seen growth in the academic field. More universities are providing degrees for an enthusiastic pupil. However, it is difficult for most people to sign up for universities paying a hefty sum. Also, there are people who are employed, yet wish to switch the career into project management. In order to help those aspirants, there are courses that provide pmp certification online at an affordable price.