What is Project Management?What is project management? To define project management we need to understand project management objectives and discuss project management procedures. This article has been generously contributed by Peter Stoemmer. Peter is an experienced management consultant. He has directed project management teams on projects throughout the world. For any project management enquiries you can contact Peter via his site.
Define Project ManagementThe question, what is project management, is important for virtually every business, be it small, medium, or large. Startup of a new business is already a project; when running that business, we get involved into projects like entering a new market, developing and marketing a new product or service, and, of course, executing uniquely specified work for our customers. Thus, being successful in managing projects is a critical success factor for our business all together.I answer the question, what is project management, in four steps: First, I give you my definition of the term "project". Second, I will take the classical approach where we consider project management being a straight forward process. Third, I extend this classical approach to management of uncertainty. Finally, in a fourth step, I propose a practical conclusion.
What is a Project?So, how do we define the term "project"? Looking up in PMI's Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, we find: A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.Consequently, every project has clearly defined start and end dates. Since resources are limited every project has a clearly defined budget as well. All that sounds a little theoretical; so, let us look at a real life example: Building a new family home based on our own design and requirements, with start date February 01 and end date October 31, and an overall budget of USD 500,000.-- Friends who have done this, been there told me that building one's own home is a never ending story. So, setting up the requirements for such a project seems to be particularly tricky. We summarize the three corner stones of a project in a picture like this:
Peter gives a very clear explanation of the fundamentalsof project managementon his site. The project scope describes the desired result and all the work necessary to create that result; the project schedule tells us in what time we want to accomplish all the work; the project budget defines the necessary amount of money for that whole endeavor.
The Project Management ProcessThe classical answer to our basic question, what is project management, would be: project management is a process. Generally speaking, it comprises all activities that are necessary in order to accomplish the project goal. The following picture illustrates the project management process with its central phases:
In definition phase, we set the first draft of requirements in terms of scope, schedule, and budget in order to have a concrete and clear goal for planning. In planning phase, we create all necessary plans like design drawings, a work breakdown structure, major milestones and a detailed schedule for all the work packages and tasks, as well as cost and financing plan for the whole project. In implementation phase, we – together with all team members and sub-contractors - execute the plan. In closing phase, we close all open items, complete the documentation, do a final calculation, and have a great party to celebrate the success. This could be already a good answer to the question: what is project management? But, even with the best project plan in hand, real life holds just too many eventualities. For example, we could encounter a serious problem during implementation making it necessary to find a work-around or to change our original plan.
Managing UncertaintyWe extend our classical answer for what is project management, to: project management is following that generic process, having a good plan, and being prepared for uncertainty. How can we prepare for uncertainty?A possible problem that calls for a work-around or a change of our plan, we call a risk. If we spend some extra time in planning phase in order to identify risks and come up with ideas how we could deal with these risks, we will be prepared for most of those eventualities or uncertainties. So, risk management will make our project plan more robust, keeping the classical project management concept still intact, as a linear process. For certain projects, this might not be enough. Let us take the example of building a web site. When using a web host service like Site-Build-It, we will be well informed about keywords that lead real people with real demand to our site. Some of these keywords might not be on our initial list, and consequently, not in our initial plan for building the site. If we were not flexible enough to shift our focus in implementation phase to those new keywords, we missed the resulting traffic. This kind of flexibility is typical for projects in IT business. Modern concepts, summarized under the term "Extreme Project Management", provide a different answer to our initial question, what is project management, in that highly volatile environment. Extreme Project Management is all about managing uncertainty. There, we break up the classical, linear project management process into many iteration steps, as illustrated by the spiral model of project management.
By design, this spiral-like process opens our project for changes, even major changes, at any time into the project. Following the spiral, revolution by revolution, we get more and more detailed or even new requirements, and consequently, changes to the plan and the result itself. In order to match the speed of change of the project environment we adjust the frequency of revolutions. Visit Peter's site to find out more about risk management. Learn more about the project management process here. Practical Conclusion"What is project management?" There is no simple answer. Just as with the wave-particle-dualism in modern physics, modern project management holds a surprise: for classical projects, like building a house, with stable requirements, we follow the classical project management process – that works quite well. For IT projects, like building a web site, with fast changing requirements, we follow the spiral model of project management.Thus, my answer to the question, what is project management, would be: Project management is the dualism of a linear project management process for classical projects with stable requirements and a spiral model for projects with a highly volatile environment of fast changing requirements. Peter Stoemmer can be contacted via his site.
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