Project management is the process of organising the way that changes are implemented efficiently within an organisation.
Many businesses achieve their goals by completing projects that contribute to their objectives. Often, projects have a finite length, involve a number of activities and people, and have deadlines and fixed budgets. Project managers plan and monitor these, and take corrective action when appropriate.
The Benefits of Developing Project Management Skills
No matter what your role, you may have to manage, or play an active role in, a project at some point during your career. It takes a great deal of skill to do this well, but the time you invest in building good project management skills can pay off enormously.
You contribute to meeting an organisation’s objectives by completing projects on time and on budget. This can produce real business results and enhance your reputation. And, when you know how to organise, schedule and delegate tasks, you can also reduce stress for yourself and your team members.
Project Management Approaches
Once you are familiar with the many tools that can help you manage your projects more efficiently, you may want to learn more about the main project management methodologies.
One is PMBOK, which stands for Project Management Body Of Knowledge. This approach centres on common project management skills, such as budgeting and managing inputs and outputs, and it’s commonly used in the U.S.
PRINCE2 stands for PRojects IN Controlled Environments. This accredited approach is widely used in the U.K. and other English-speaking countries. You use it to, among other things, clarify people’s roles, keep lines of communication open, manage project risk, and establish base costs.
Agile Project Management is another popular approach. This often works well for projects in complex, fast-moving environments, because it allows you and your team to respond flexibly to changing needs and requirements.
Project Management Approaches: an Overview
There are many tools, techniques and processes that will help you manage your projects more efficiently. We’ve listed some of the most popular ones below to get you started.
Project Management Frameworks
When you set up a new project, you need to look at lots of different factors, such as benefits, risks, budget, and objectives.
Scheduling
You may have to juggle a number of people working on different tasks during a project.
Scope Management
If you’ve already managed projects, you know that they can quickly spiral out of control as people add more requirements. This is why being able to manage the scope of a project is such an important skill. In this section, you’ll learn how to keep your project tightly focused.
Building Support for Your Projects
Your project may need the backing of many stakeholders, such as your boss, colleagues, the leadership team, clients, or key suppliers. Once you know how to pitch your idea and build support, you can get your project off the ground with the right resources in place.
Project Communication
Projects rely on good and pro-active communication.
Change Management
It takes a great deal of skill to make wide scale transformation stick within an organisation.
Key Points
No matter what your role, it’s likely that you will have to manage, or play an active role in, a project at some point during your career. When you know how to juggle multiple tasks, people, deadlines, and responsibilities, you will strengthen your reputation and improve your promotion prospects.
Take time to learn about the various project management frameworks to run a successful project from start to finish. Discover how to schedule people and tasks more effectively, and build support for your ideas so that you get the backing and funding you need to get started. Last, familiarise yourself with change management strategies, so that you can encourage others to overcome their reluctance to change.
Whether or not you hold the official title of project manager, chances are you’ll be called upon to lead some sort of project at some time.
From initiating a procedural change in your department to opening a branch office in a different city, projects come in all shapes and sizes.
As the complexity of your projects increases, the number of details you have to monitor also increases.
However, the fundamentals of managing a project from start to finish are usually very similar.
How Good Are Your Project Management Skills?
IMentor has designed a questionnaire to help you determine how well you perform in the eight key areas that are important to a successful project. This is aimed at people who manage projects of a significant size or non-accredited project managers. However, everyone can use their answers to make sure they’re applying best practices. We will send you a feedback email with your score shortly after completion of the questionnaire.
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