What Is Project Management??
Project management is the art of balancing project objectives against the constraints
of time, budget, resource availability, and quality. Achieving that balance requires
skill, experience, and a boatload of techniques. This section gives you a glimpse of
what happens from a project’s infancy to its old age.
Novices sometimes think of project management as building a sequence of tasks,
but those in the know recognize that project management starts before a project
officially begins and doesn’t end for a while after the project’s objectives are achieved.
There’s no one “right” way to manage projects (the box on page 7 identifies a few
different project-management methodologies), but most methodologies cover the
following five phases (illustrated in Figure 1-1):
• Getting started. Often called initiating, this first phase of project management
is short but important. It’s your only opportunity to get the project off to a good
start. In this phase, you answer questions like “Why are we doing this project?”
and “Do we really want to do it?” The initial attempts to describe the purpose
of a project may produce vague results like “Hold an event to raise money.”
But as you identify the stakeholders (page 17), you learn what the project is
about and what the stakeholders hope to achieve. The more specific you are
when you describe a project’s objectives, the greater your chances for success.
Neglecting to line up support for a project (page 16) is all too common, and it’s
always a big mistake. A project needs buy-in from an executive sponsor (page 18)
and the stakeholders to survive challenges like contradictory objectives, resource
shortages, funding issues, and so on. What’s more, you, the project manager,
need official support, too, so everyone knows the extent of your authority.
• Planning. This phase, which Chapter 2 covers in greater detail, is where you
draw your road map: the objectives to achieve; the work to perform; who’s going to do that work, when; and how much the whole thing will cost. Moreover,
you set out the rules of the game, including how people will communicate with
one another, who has to approve what, how you’ll manage changes and risks,
and so on.
• Performing the project. Also referred to as executing, this part of project
management lasts a long time, but it boils down to following the plan. As the
project manager, your job is to keep the project team working on the right
things at the right times.
• Keeping things under control. In a perfect world, performing the project
would be enough, because things would always run according to plan. But
because the world isn’t perfect, project managers have to monitor projects to
see whether they’re on schedule, within budget, and achieving their objectives.
Whether someone gets sick, a storm washes out a bike path on the ride route,
or your data center is plagued with locusts, something is bound to push your
project off course. In the controlling phase, you measure project performance
against the plan, decide what to do if the project is off track, make the necessary
adjustments, and then measure again. Chapter 14 explains how to use Project
2013 to control things.
• Gaining closure. Like personal relationships, projects need closure. Before
you can call a project complete, you have to tie up loose ends like closing out
contracts, transitioning resources to their new assignments, and documenting
the overall project performance (page 503). The closing phase is when you ask
for official acceptance that the project is complete—your sign that your job is
done. Chapter 17 describes the information to collect in this phase and different
ways to archive a project.
Project management is the art of balancing project objectives against the constraints
of time, budget, resource availability, and quality. Achieving that balance requires
skill, experience, and a boatload of techniques. This section gives you a glimpse of
what happens from a project’s infancy to its old age.
Novices sometimes think of project management as building a sequence of tasks,
but those in the know recognize that project management starts before a project
officially begins and doesn’t end for a while after the project’s objectives are achieved.
There’s no one “right” way to manage projects (the box on page 7 identifies a few
different project-management methodologies), but most methodologies cover the
following five phases (illustrated in Figure 1-1):
• Getting started. Often called initiating, this first phase of project management
is short but important. It’s your only opportunity to get the project off to a good
start. In this phase, you answer questions like “Why are we doing this project?”
and “Do we really want to do it?” The initial attempts to describe the purpose
of a project may produce vague results like “Hold an event to raise money.”
But as you identify the stakeholders (page 17), you learn what the project is
about and what the stakeholders hope to achieve. The more specific you are
when you describe a project’s objectives, the greater your chances for success.
Neglecting to line up support for a project (page 16) is all too common, and it’s
always a big mistake. A project needs buy-in from an executive sponsor (page 18)
and the stakeholders to survive challenges like contradictory objectives, resource
shortages, funding issues, and so on. What’s more, you, the project manager,
need official support, too, so everyone knows the extent of your authority.
• Planning. This phase, which Chapter 2 covers in greater detail, is where you
draw your road map: the objectives to achieve; the work to perform; who’s going to do that work, when; and how much the whole thing will cost. Moreover,
you set out the rules of the game, including how people will communicate with
one another, who has to approve what, how you’ll manage changes and risks,
and so on.
• Performing the project. Also referred to as executing, this part of project
management lasts a long time, but it boils down to following the plan. As the
project manager, your job is to keep the project team working on the right
things at the right times.
• Keeping things under control. In a perfect world, performing the project
would be enough, because things would always run according to plan. But
because the world isn’t perfect, project managers have to monitor projects to
see whether they’re on schedule, within budget, and achieving their objectives.
Whether someone gets sick, a storm washes out a bike path on the ride route,
or your data center is plagued with locusts, something is bound to push your
project off course. In the controlling phase, you measure project performance
against the plan, decide what to do if the project is off track, make the necessary
adjustments, and then measure again. Chapter 14 explains how to use Project
2013 to control things.
• Gaining closure. Like personal relationships, projects need closure. Before
you can call a project complete, you have to tie up loose ends like closing out
contracts, transitioning resources to their new assignments, and documenting
the overall project performance (page 503). The closing phase is when you ask
for official acceptance that the project is complete—your sign that your job is
done. Chapter 17 describes the information to collect in this phase and different
ways to archive a project.
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