What is project management?
A project is a temporary endeavor that a company undertakes to create a unique product, service, or result in a particular instance. Project managers are responsible for initiating, planning, designing, executing, monitoring, and controlling a project from start to finish. During a project, it is the responsibility of a project manager to foresee any problems that might occur, monitor the overall budget, and conduct various analysis on quality, scalability, interoperability, and more.
Why is project management important?
Every project comes with a set of ups and downs and sometimes catastrophes. A project manager helps to eliminate the natural ebbs and flows of a project, helping to hold the client and the team executing the project together so that the goal is realized with as little disruption as possible.
How do you avoid risk?
Every project comes with some form of risk. There’s always a chance something could go wrong, no matter the scale of the project at hand. It is the job of the project manager to predict and plan for these risks so that they’re able to be handled quickly and efficiently if and when they do arise. The best way to do this is by:
- Accepting that the risk exists so that you can make plans to avoid them.
- Transferring the risk when applicable (but this is rare).
- Limit the impact of the risk by mitigating it, or creating a smaller problem that’s easier to fix.
- Exploiting the risk if it has a positive impact (something that would benefit the project as a whole).
What is more important: scope, quality, cost?
The model of constraints that come along with managing a project, also referred to as the Triple Constraint, state that the success of a project is determined by the budget, deadlines, and features associated with the project. The Triple Constraint is a balancing act in which each part holds equal weight.
What does effective project management look like?
Effective project management is all about common sense. With the right resources, careful organization, and amount of time, any project can be brought to fruition. Effective project management looks different depending on a company’s goals, whether it’s setting up a new website or establishing a completely new department.
