An introduction to Project Management  

A project is any temporary initiatives or tasks taken up to achieve specific goal by creating unique product, service or result. A project need to fulfill the set goal(s) and for any project to be successful, proper Project Management is required. Any project start with assigning the project manager, who is responsible for leading and completing the project by addressing important questions, sketching out the scope and goal of project and importantly communicating and setting realist objectives to achieve in a timely manner. Project manager is also responsible for timely monitoring and identifying any gaps or critical pathway to ensure all deliverable are being met and project is moving towards closure.

Any good project management involves balancing the three most fundamental factor, i.e., Scope, Time and Cost. All three are dependent, as any change in any one of the parameter result in changes to the other. Any project has following phases

  1. Initiation: Laid down the foundation of project with scope, issues, resource and overall broad timeline and expected budget.
  2. Planning: Important phase t define detailed tasks, timelines and making staterg to make project successful.
  3. Execution: Working on the planned statergy to bring project on ground.
  4. Monitoring and Control: Monitoring all the plans and works being executed to have successful project. Control measures are taken by project Manager to resolve the gaps which are occurring during the execution phase
  5. Closure: Once all deliverables have been achieved which were defined during the project initiation stage and fomally handover to client satisfaction, one can say the project has been closed.

  1. Work Breakdown Structure: For Scope

 When a project starts, major focus is to achieve set goals. Often it is missed that to achieve any goal number of tasks need to be completed.

For an instance, when goal is to build a house there are major and minor tasks which need to be completion to achieve the set goal

  • Civil work (foundation laying, brick wall, plastering, painting, tiling etc.)
  • Mechnical (Water storage tank, plumbing, fittings etc)
  • Electrical (Conduit, Main Meter, Lighting and fittings etc)
  • And other works

Major point is missing any task during project can lead to unfinished/unsatisfactory work, hindering the smooth project closure. For that Work breakdown structure is used. Where work are divided into smaller tasks which helps in the monitoring and easy execution of work.

  1. Project Schedule and Timelines

 Once the scope has been broken down into smaller tasks, it is important to set duration for each smaller task and to set them in a manner that they are trackable and not exceeding the set overall project timelines. To do this in any project

  • Estimate the duration of each task
  • Add realistic buffer timeline
  • Put task in sequesnce of their occurnace during the project and link them basis there dependency to each other.
  • Assign start and End dates to each task

  1. Human Resources

Apart from planning budget, scope and time – resource management plays important role in the successful completion of work. While a project is formed, resources are alloated to project manager. Project Manager is responsible for defining the needed resource by estimating the efforts needed, validate resource availability and define roles and responsibility of each to attacin the target. RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) Matrix is one common approach for managing larger size projects involving more people.

  1. Risk Planning

In real time, unpredictable events can happen which can lead to project stagnation, like loss, injury, or other unavoidable circumstances and all these are considered as risk in project. These risk can be extended to cost, time, scope, quality etc. Project Manager is to identify the project risk, analyze it and develop risk mitigation strategies to avoid them.

  1. Conclusion

 

Project management is a very vast topic and this topic only gives a brief idea on the project management. Project success depends on the experience of Project manager to handle the project along with his/her expertise to use the various project management tools.

6. Reference

 

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