The purpose of project management is to foresee as many dangers as possible, plan, organize and control activities in such a way that risks are avoided or countered leading to a final result that satisfies the requirements of the project sponsor without using more money and resources than those which were included in the budget.
[src: Marks, T. (2012) 20:20 Project Management:How to deliver on time, on budget and on spec, Kogan Page]
The difference between project management and operation management is that the project has a clear beginning and end where as operations are sustained for some time or ongoing.
Define project succinctly and with detail. Have clear understanding of resources: Time, Money, People, Infrastructure. Know who is(are) the stakeholder(s). Obtain commitment.
Plan the project WBS (Work Breakdown Structure), Gantt Chart
Experience allows you to be good at estimating things you can think of but tendency is that you can't think of everything. You will never think of everything without perfect knowledge of the future. The next biggest problem is the things we thought of but forgot. Lastly, there is the problem of not knowing the significance of something. A common quote is "The devil lies in the details."
Common under estimated items are: administration, time spent of finding things, configuring things and general support tasks for own work and tasks you did not anticipate.
Planning Tools: 1.)Standard work breakdown based tools: Primavera, Microsoft Project 2.) Ticket based tools: Jira, Trello, Pivotal Tracker, Clarizen
Any disciplined approach will work
Other Notes:
professional responsibility, professional misconduct
There may be critical task that is not getting done and potentially jeopardizing the whole project where you must discuss with upper management to get involved.
Objectives to project management:
1. Get organized, Know best practices and invest time into training,
2. Solicit Support: 1. Mentors 2. Sounding Board
3. Identify Go-To-People
4. Know your team/stakeholders/customers
5. Set expectations
6. Get involved: 1. project organization 2. LinkdIn Groups 3. Project Management Groups (Online & Offline)
7.
Implement systems: 1. Tools 2. Templates
Deliverables of a project:
Typical phases of a project: Initialization -> Planning -> Executing & Controlling -> Closing
Initialization:
INPUTS: Business Opportunity
OUTPUTS: Project Charter or Proposal
Planning:
INPUTS: Project Charter, Lessons Learned
OUTPUTS: Project Plan & Sub. Plans, Deliverables Diagram, Communication, Risk & Issues, Change Management, Procurement, Cost, Schedules
Executing & Controlling:
INPUTS: Project Charter, Project Plan
OUTPUTS: Performance Reports, Issues & Risk Logs, Change Logs, Project Progress, Deliverables
Closing:
INPUTS: Performance Reports, Project
Progress, Project Logs,. Deliverables
OUTPUTS: Product Acceptance, Final/Actual Reports, Project Documents, Lessons Learned
