To quickly adapt to constantly changing market conditions, companies in the 21st-century resort to different methods. One of them is the project approach. Someone in this process got the role of an executor, and the other led a team that performs certain functions on the way to a common goal. Private entrepreneurs and large companies, international corporations, government agencies, and authorities use project management. What explains this demand? Let’s try to figure it out.
What Is Project Management?
The activities of any company can be divided into projects. Their goal is to get a result in the form of a new product, technology, or service that is launched on the market. Project management is the organization of work to achieve the planned result within the approved time and budget.
Recently, project management has become a very popular subject for study at universities. Many students want to be educated in this field, but many also face challenges because this field is new to them. Fortunately, there are services where students can get project management homework help if a topic is difficult. Experts who work on such services have the necessary knowledge to help students with tasks of varying complexity.
Methods of Project Management
The way of managing the process depends on the scale and complexity of the goal. When conducting a marketing campaign or launching a new software product, different methods will be used.
Just as there are no identical projects, there are no universal management systems “for all occasions.” Each technique works in certain conditions and circumstances. Suffice it to recall the experience of the American astronauts who landed on the moon on July 20, 1969. The name Neil Armstrong instantly became famous. But in fact, the full-scale project owes its success to 400,000 NASA employees and more than 20,000 universities and companies that took part in the implementation of the Apollo mission.
Project management differs from traditional management by focusing on a specific result. Visually, the differences between these methods look like this:
Traditional technique
- Focuses on the process of getting the job done
- No time limit
- Responsibilities are divided into positions
- Monotonous, routine nature of work
- Work is distributed to permanent employees by positions
Project management
- Result oriented
- A specific deadline is set
- Resource allocation in progress
- Performing tasks of various specifics
- Highly specialized specialists with in-depth knowledge in the desired area carry out the work.
Project management helps to precisely control workflows by dividing work into separate parts. This simplifies budget assessment, ensures compliance with deadlines, and checks the quality of tasks performed by performers at each stage.
The organization of work on the project begins with setting goals, for which a team of specialists with the necessary skills is selected. At the same time, they are guided by standards – the rules that must be followed in order to achieve a result. They are:
- public, developed, used in specialized communities;
- corporate, operating within the same company;
- private, approved for a specific project.
Basic Principles
The basic principles are a set of specific actions performed within the framework of the tasks set. Their number, complexity, deadlines depend on the specifics of the project. It has several stages of development that form the life cycle:
- Initiation. Determine the goal, appoint a leader, perform a preliminary calculation of the budget, the necessary resources.
- Planning. Develop a plan of strategic action for the leader and the team, able to adapt to possible changes in the course of work.
- Execution. Each performer does their part of the work. The leader sets tasks, motivates the members of their team, clearly communicates the essence of the task to each performer, and manages the project.
- Monitoring, control. This task is greatly facilitated by the use of CRM systems that clearly display the effectiveness of the activities performed.
- Completion. It implies the execution of documents, the transfer of the work performed to the customer. Don’t forget about feedback. Taking into account critical remarks and drawing appropriate conclusions, many mistakes can be avoided in the implementation of new projects.
In life cycle management, several approaches are used that affect their further effectiveness and success. In project management, the following project management models are used:
- Predictive model. Tasks, deadlines, budgets are approved at the preparation stage and remain unchanged throughout the project. To make changes, it is necessary to restructure the entire built system. It is suitable for product-specific processes.
- Iterative, incremental model. The project is divided into separate operations, repeated as much as necessary to obtain a certain result. At the same time, processes are constantly being improved.
- Flexible model. They are used for processes requiring rapid response to changes. It combines iterative and incremental methods.
The easiest way to implement any project within a team or office is to break it down into stages or tasks. All that is needed for this is to create a simple checklist that describes the sequence of actions that need to be performed to obtain a specific result.
Different in nature, content, complexity, projects need varying degrees of control and organization. In their implementation, various management methodologies are used.
Popular methodologies and their features
This concept is understood not just as recommendations or standards that must be followed during the implementation of the project, but specific actions that set the course, the direction of work. These include:
Agile
It is a popular iterative-incremental approach based on the formation of requirements and their implementation through the interaction of teams from specialists of different profiles. Simply put, this set of flexible methods allows you to get a high-quality product due to constant contact between performers and customers. It is used in the IT industry, in medium-sized companies implementing creative projects.
Scrum
It is part of the Agile methodology, aimed at the needs of the customer. A flexible framework is the most structured among other members of the family, which includes sets of practices for enterprises and companies of various specifics.
Kanban
It is based on the theoretical and practical principles of the Agile methodology, representing a visualization of tasks for a visual representation of what functions each employee of a team or office performs.
Whether you are new to project management or have some experience in the field, it is worth working on emotional intelligence regularly, especially during crises and instability in the company.
About the Author/s
The New Jersey Digest is a new jersey magazine that has chronicled daily life in the Garden State for over 10 years.
