What is Project Management?

Project management can mean different things to different people. Quite often, people misunderstand the concept because they have ongoing projects within their company and feel that they are using project management to control these activities. In such a case, the following might be considered an appropriate definition:

Project management is the art of creating the illusion that any outcome is the result of a series of predetermined, deliberate acts when, in fact, it was dumb luck.

Although this might be the way that some companies are running their projects, this is not project management. Project management is designed to make better use of existing resources by getting work to flow horizontally as well as vertically within the company.

The following would be an overview definition of project management:

Project management is the planning, organizing, directing, and controlling of company resources for a relatively short-term objective that has been established to complete specific goals and objectives. Furthermore, project management utilizes the systems approach to management by having functional personnel (the vertical hierarchy) assigned to a specific project (the horizontal hierarchy).

Classical management is usually considered to have five functions or principles: 

1. Planning 
2. Organizing 
3. Staffing 
4. Controlling 
5. Directing

OVERVIEW OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT

The objective of the figure is to show that project management is designed to manage or control company resources on a given activity, within time, within the cost, and within the performance. Time, cost, and performance are the constraints on the project. If the project is to be accomplished for an outside customer, then the project has a fourth constraint: good customer relations.

Projects exist to produce deliverables. The person ultimately assigned as the project manager may very well be assigned based upon the size, nature, and scope of the deliverables. Deliverables are outputs or the end result of either the completion of the project or the end of a life-cycle phase of the project. Deliverables are measurable, tangible outputs and can take such form as:

• Hardware Deliverables: These are hardware items, such as a table, a prototype, or a piece of equipment.
• Software Deliverables: These items are similar to hardware deliverables but are usually paper products, such as reports, studies, handouts, or documentation. Some companies do not differentiate between hardware and software deliverables.
• Interim Deliverables: These items can be either hardware or software deliverables and progressively evolve as the project proceeds. An example might be a series of interim reports leading up to the final report.

Individuals or organizations that can be favorably or unfavorably impacted by the project are called Stakeholders.

Each company has its own categorization system for identifying stakeholders. A typical system might be:

 

1. Organizational stakeholders 

• Executive officers 
• Line managers 
• Employees 
• Unions

2. Product/market stakeholders

• Customers 
• Suppliers 
• Local committees 
• Governments (local, state, and federal) 
• General public 

3. Capital market stakeholders  

• Shareholders 
• Creditors 
• Banks

Factors for defining project success:

• Within the allocated time-period 
• Within the budgeted cost 
• At the proper performance or specification level 
• With the acceptance by the customer/user 
• With minimum or mutually agreed upon scope changes 
• Without disturbing the main workflow of the organization 
• Without changing the corporate culture

Above defined factors must be concerned for the completion of the project. 

In the current situation, very few projects are completed within the original scope of the project. Scope means a defined set of objectives as per project for particular vendors. 

Classification of Projects:

That's it for this lesson, see you in the next lesson with roles of individual personnel in organization and their effect on project.