Overview of Project Management
Let us start by discussing what project management is and then further address the question of why is it important in any project. A project is any task that is assigned to a team with the motive to get it done successfully. Project management requires the handling of all the project management tasks in a project life cycle from the start to the end. Generally, project managers are assigned to projects to fulfill these tasks and hence help in holding together the client and the team by ensuring that the project is delivered in time and is within the budget.
We’ll try to understand this with a short example; let’s say a project starts without a project manager. The whole team has been briefed about the deliverables by the client, and they just have to work on it. Without any proper management, the time to divide the whole job into smaller tasks and organize and assign them to each other will be a tedious process and time consuming and let’s assume even if it is accomplished, what happens when there is any misunderstanding or conflicts between the team members, who resolve them? What if someone leaves the project in the middle or some resources need to be allocated? To work on the project and also manage the project would demand a lot of time and energy and would be nearly impossible for even larger projects.
Hence, to ensure the smooth working of the project and keep it on track, project management is crucial to any project.
Goals of Project Management
Project management is important because it helps in achieving the following goals:
1. Project Planning
Project management is important so that the project can be properly planned and laid out with clear objectives, deliverables, and deadlines in mutual agreement with the stakeholders, management, and team members.
A good project manager knows how to efficiently run a project by understanding the need for the resources and how to use them in the given time and budget to provide the best results. To achieve this, a workable and reasonable plan needs to be put in place, which helps everyone working in the project to recognize their part of contribution and hence strive to fulfill them.
2. To provide vision to the project and a sense of leadership
An efficient project manager brings the vision to the project, which helps the team to align its goals with that of the stakeholders, so everyone is in accordance with the main objective of the project and is on the path to deliver them.
With good project management, a sense of leadership prevails in the project, which drives the team members in the right direction to do their best and help the project to become a success. The team members also feel accountable for their tasks in the presence of a team manager in the project, who keeps everything organized and in control so that everyone is aware of their deliverables in the project and what they are in charge of without any confusion.
3. Keeping Track
Project management helps in keeping track of the progress of the project and helps to remove any roadblocks if found.
A good project manager will see to it that the project flow is in agreement with the project plan, and if any deviation is found, it is reported, and the right action is taken to bring it back on track by implementing corrective measures. It is important for the project to follow the revised plan if it has to be delivered on time as expected, and hence status reports are useful to bring transparency to the ongoing work, which also includes any issues if faced and delays due to them. This can also be shared with the stakeholders, so it is easy for them to have an oversight of the project’s progress.
4. Quality Assurance
Only delivering the project on time is not important if it is not in accordance with the given objectives and does not match the expected outcomes. Quality assurance hence is a very important process of any project as it helps to test and keep in check what is being delivered to the client matches their requirements or not.
It is essential that project management ensures that the quality of the project is tested at every stage, so the outcome matches the requirements. Tight schedules may introduce bad quality projects; therefore, it is important that the resources are effectively managed to deliver positive results without any hindrance to its quality. Time should be allotted to test and keep in check the quality at every step of the project.
5. Risk Management
Good project management requires the project managers to have a pre-prioritized list of risks that the project may potentially run into with their alternatives to implement if in case it does.
Before starting to work on the project, the project manager needs to sit with the team and analyze the risks beforehand. In practice, it is difficult to cover all the risks, but a good manager always has an idea as to what risks might appear depending on the type of the project. This knowledge also comes with previous work experiences and helps to identify the potential threats before working on the project, so when an issue arises, there is a pre-devised plan to tackle it and prevent the project from running into any kind of uncanny situation.
Efficient risk management skills are required by any project manager as the project might not always run according to the plan, and even if it does, real-time risks cannot be dealt with beforehand, so the management style to adapt and deal with it when it poses a threat is a skill that a good project manager should possess.
Going through all these points, we realize that good project management matters for any project as it promises success. The fate of any project depends on their project manager and their skills to organize the team, plan the project, test the quality of the project, manage the risks and lead the project with the vision to achieve success with motivated team players and inspire all of them to do their best.
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