Understanding Project Management

A project is really a very simple concept that many professional and academic books spend pages defining. Essential, a project is a task with a known end point. For example, buildig a new house is a project, the end point being when the house is built. Similarly, creating a new piece of computer software is a project, as is launching a new product for business. Project can be used to complete many different types of tasks.

Usualy the term 'project' is applied to tasks with some degree of complexity. So whilst you could argue that cooking yourself some toast is a project, with the end point being buttered toast on your plate, usually the term is not applied to such simple activities which do not need to be damaged with the rigour of a recognised project.

Project fulfill some clear pre-difine objective, in a planned period of time, and to planned cost. Once the project is complete something will have changed - for example, you have anew house, anew computer system or a new product.

Project management is a formal discipline for managing projects. Project management has been developed over the past view decads as it has become apparent that without a structured approach, people are not very good at completing project successfully. The aim of project managemnt is to ensure that projects are completed and that the end point is achieved. More than this, project management is about reaching that the end point predictably, which usually means to given cost and within a planned of time.

Your role as the project manager is to understand enough project management to apply its rigour and structure and ensure your project is succesfully completed within the time and cost you require. If you follow the steps in this book, you will find this not so hard. The things you must do as a project manager are:

• Ensure there is aclear understandingwhy project is being done, and what will produce.
• Plan the project to understand how long it will take and how much it will cost.
• Manage the project to ensure that as the project progresses, it achieves you have defined within the time and cost specified.
• Complete the project properly to make sure everything produced by the project is the quality expected and works as required.

Every project is done because someone wants to be done. the person who wants it to be done is called, in project management terminology, the project customer. The customer maybe tour self, your boss at work, someone who buys product and services from you, or anyone else you work for or with. The customer may be one person or group of people. In project it is important to understand who the customer is and to work closely with them. Project customers have some specific responsibilities in projects. They will be involved in determining why you are going to do a project and what it will produce, for giving you access to resources such as people and money, and for making various decisions through the life of the project.

Three is a difference between managing people in a project team and the normal task of line management. The people in project team usually have a line manager whom they work for a day-to day basis. They are only working for you on the project, and they may have other task to complete which arenothing todo with your project. When the project ends you may have nothing further to do with the team. Even so, you need be able to manage, motivate and direct the team. This requires you to have a clear understanding of what you need them to do in respect of the specific project project you are managing and how much time they should spend on the project. Critically, you also need to make sure they are spending this time working on your project and not doing other task for their normal manager.