PMI defines project management as “the use of specific knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to deliver something of value to people.”
In simple terms, project management means the process of leading a team to hit goals or complete deliverables within a set timeframe. Project management involves project documentation, planning, tracking, and communication in order to deliver work successfully within the constraints of time, scope, and budget.
Examples of projects you encounter every day are:
- A new report, website, tool, or product;
- Vacation, moving, house furnishing.
All projects have defined start and end dates, goals, scopes, and resources, require some level of Project Management and are unique. For instance, a report you do every week isn’t a project unless you’re doing it the first time.
“Operations keeps the lights on, strategy provides a light at the end of the tunnel, but project management is the train engine that moves the organization forward.”
– Joy Gumz
In Business, you may start a project to develop software, construct a building or design a website. These projects have a team of people responsible for different aspects of the delivery. PMI calls it Project Team.
Sometimes, a dedicated Project Manager is employed to ensure the team delivers the project on time and under budget and hits its key objectives. In other cases, a member of the Project Team performs the role of a Project Manager. You may call them Accidental Project Managers.
Project management is usually associated with fields in engineering and construction and, more lately, healthcare and information technology (IT). These spheres typically have a complex set of components that have to be completed and assembled in a set fashion to create a functioning product.
No matter what the industry is, the project manager tends to have roughly the same job: to help define the goals and objectives of the project and determine when the various project components are to be completed and by whom. Moreover, they create quality control checks to ensure completed parts meet a certain standard.
“Project management can be defined as a way of developing structure in a complex project, where the independent variables of time, cost, resources and human behaviour come together.”
– Rory Burke
Overall, project management includes the planning, initiation, execution, monitoring, and closing of a project. Project managers use many different project management methodologies and techniques, including traditional, waterfall, agile, and lean.
Quotes from TheDigitalProjectManager.