Project Management

Question- What is project management and why is it essential to have project management to run a successful business?

Answer- Nowadays, when all economies are growing and expanding at an exponential rate then project management has become essential need of all businesses, industries, corporates to successfully performing and achieving desired goals and expanding globally. In hard times, such a Covid pandemic it became much harder or even impossible to manage, control and perform tasks/projects remotely and the necessity of project management become more essential than ever. Still, being such an important tool for success of a project or task, many people and industries are still unaware or doesn’t understand project management completely and thinks it as a child’s play. They don’t know the exact meaning and have clear understanding of the project management thus ignores its importance until doesn’t face disaster in their business. With the hope that I will be able to explain a little of it; today I decided to write this post on – “What is Project Management?”

In very simplistic and plain words, “Project management is an integrated approach to perform a bunch of tasks taken by a project manager to achieve an objective.” This Integrated approach requires certain skill sets to be demonstrated by a project manager are as follows but not limited to-    

·      collection of all available information that may be required or related to project and get it documented properly and to ensure that same are being update time to time

·      identification of required resources to perform tasks and bringing all available resources together on a single platform and team formation

·      setting and agreeing on a budget/cost and timeline to complete and deliver the task/project

·      implementing, managing and controlling time, cost and resource schedule and keep track of the same

·      identification and managing all stakeholder involved as per their power and influence on the project

·      defining, establishing, publishing and managing communication methodologies and process to be used on project, and working as a conduit for communication between all stakeholders and soothe and resolve the issues arising between them time to time

·      risk identification, finding the opportunities might be available but hidden, list out the threats and manage those to it best and turn unfavourable conditions in favour of project

·      ensure workflow or processes are running smoothly and resolve any disputes or hinderance arising

·      keeping track of all deliverables and issues arising time to time and solutions or actions taken

·      to ensure that required resources are available on right time and performing their tasks satisfactorily

·      ensuring health and wellness of team and acknowledging, appreciating and rewarding their efforts time to time as per the performance given by them

·      keeping tabs and ensure that quality checks and process are implemented and followed as per the need of the project

·      ensure that all the documents are being recorded and stored as per itinerary and can be made available or presented as and when required

·      to control and manage the changes on the project as required

·      assist any internal or external audits

·      facilitating meetings, workshops, trainings as and when required

·      ensuring lessons learnt are recorded time to time and shared within the team or stakeholders as required

·      should be a team leader, effective communicator and a great decision maker and shall demonstrate virtues as follows- flexible, adaptable, good listener, open to learn, act spontaneous, confident, smart worker, understanding, analysing and problem solver, trouble-shooter, logical and must be decisive  

·      taking feedback from the clients after project delivery and maintaining customer relationships

Different projects can have different tasks and different methodologies or technologies or tools can be used to complete these tasks such as agile/waterfall methodologies, project management tools-Primavera, Microsoft Project or Jira, depending upon the type of project and its requirements. A project might require one or all skill sets as explained above based upon the tasks required to perform and achieve the objective of the project. Finally, I would say that project management is not merely limited to achieve certain goals or results; it can have a wide range of outcomes and expectations from a project manager depending upon the aspects of the project or task taken by a project manager which require absolute planning, monitoring and control of activities at all stages of the project.  

Thanks for reading. Please comment to add more.

Jai Hind!