Project management is the practice of initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific success criteria at the specified time. The primary challenge of project management is to achieve all of the project goals within the given constraints. This information is usually described in project documentation, created at the beginning of the development process. The primary constraints are scope, time, quality and budget. Project management is also considered separate from the normal, repetitive operations of a business. For example, in a manufacturing company, the actual business process of putting resources into production is not a project, since these are permanent (or even semi-permanent) activities of the business.
Now, if management decides to devise a new business process to create another set of products that is the project. Project planning will not be possible if there is no project life cycle to speak of. This refers to the series of activities that must be performed or accomplished in order to achieve the project goals.
Initiating:
The initiating processes determine the nature and scope of the project. If this stage is not performed well, it is unlikely that the project will be successful in meeting the business’ needs. The key project controls needed here are an understanding of the business environment and making sure that all necessary controls are incorporated into the project. Any deficiencies should be reported and a recommendation should be made to fix them.
Planning:
After the initiation stage, the project is planned to an appropriate level of detail. The main purpose is to plan time, cost and resources adequately to estimate the work needed and to effectively manage risk during project execution. As with the Initiation process group, a failure to adequately plan greatly reduces the project’s chances of successfully accomplishing its goals.
Executing:
While executing we must know what are the planned terms that need to be executed. The execution/implementation phase ensures that the project management plan’s deliverables are executed accordingly. This phase involves proper allocation, coordination, and management of human resources and any other resources such as material and budgets.
Monitoring and Controlling:
Monitoring and controlling consists of those processes performed to observe project execution so that potential problems can be identified in a timely manner and corrective action can be taken, when necessary, to control the execution of the project.
Closing:
Closing includes the formal acceptance of the project and the ending thereof. Administrative activities include the archiving of the files and documenting lessons learned.
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