Know the Basics of Project Management

Believe it or not, management is omnipresent (Means, has presence everywhere around). The management lies in planning for next day school, attending a marriage in relations, preparing Indian food according to days of the week (since in India, non-veg is avoided on Tuesdays due to spiritual reasons), and in many other similar day-to-day routine work. Sometimes, we even do not realize that we have learnt some basics of management just by observing the happenings around us. And as you guessed it right, it is a never ending learning.

So you are convinced that management is needed everywhere. But one should also be convinced that there are certain situations or domains which need more rigorous policies of management than others. These are situations are :

• When the amount of time invested is huge and one cannot afford to restart the venture again once it gets failed.

• When the money invested is such a number which cannot be compensated.

• When life of many gets affected if management fails.

• When consequences of inappropriate management will shatter the dreams of many to the irrecoverable extent.

We are not building any pressure, but we aim to make you feel the worth of efficient management.

To understand more about importance of management, let us discuss project management and let us realize its basics.

Whether mentioned or not, management is always explained in context to a business because the process of management has a widespread scope in any business. But that does not deny the fact that principles of management applied in business, can also be applied in all the management processes.

There are basically 5 Primary principles of management

Planning involves conception of idea, some feasibility study, identifying the initiation steps and resources availability. Organizing is the step that follows planning and majorly refers to establishing the internal physical structure to execute the plan.

People are needed to actually put the plan into action. So another step called staffing is needed where the people are assigned their tasks. Utmost care is to be taken to have a right person at the right job. Under this step, people may require some training to bloom their expertise.

Once people are set to execute the project plan, there must be proper supervision in the form of directing function that includes leading, motivating, communicating and coordinating within the project team.

Controlling functions is carried out for having time-to-time review of performance, rollback in case of deviation, suggestions and optimized solutions to problems.

Before making plans of managing a project, it is good to identify the involved entities. For any project, these entities are Product, People and Process.

Project Manager is battling with these entities for a successful project delivery. Every entity has its own problems and issues for the manager. To manage all of these, the above mentioned basic principles of management act as life-support system.

 Interestingly, we may write a mathematical deduction:

Product = Process + People

Project Manager = People + Process + Product

Thus, the project manager needs to

• Plan the product.

• Organize the internal structure to support people and process.

• Appoint and assign people.

• Direct the resources and thus the process.

• And control the factors that may deviate project from success path.

Once the process of project development begins, it needs continuous monitoring. Certain questions related to project, which one asks thyself:

1. Where are we going?

2. How do we get there?

3. Do we have enough time, money and resources to get there?

4. What hurdles do we encounter while travelling there?

5. How do we know we are making progress?

Have you asked these questions to yourself? And asking is not sufficient, have you analyzed their answers?

If yes, then you can relax and if not, then we hope your senior would have read this blog too.

For summarized review here are one liners depicting basics of project management process :

• Project should be finite.

• Decide whether or not project should happen.

• Anticipate risks and continue doing it as you go.

• Cost, time and quality are co-dependant.

• Project planning with clear activities.

• Right people at right project task.

• Set the deadlines.

• Consider using automation tool, if need is felt.

• And importantly, celebrate success.

And at last, cartoon says it all

Comment if you understood the humour and truth of the picture.

To see how a project management software proves to be useful for project manager, download Project Cafe, our windows-based project management software.