What do you mean by Project Management? Discuss the methods, approaches of project management.

What is a project?

A project is a unique endeavor that has specific goals, beginning and endings, and a fixed budget. Budget includes time, money and resources.

What do you mean by project management?

It is the process of determining how to run the project so as to meet the client’s requirement on time and within budget. It answers the following questions:

·      What problems are you going to solve?

·      How will you solve the problems?

·      What is the plan?

·      How will you execute the plan? And When?

·      How will you know the project has been done successfully?

What is a Project Manger? What are the skills required by project manager?

A project manger is a person who is responsible for correct and onetime delivery of project.  A project manger must have following skills:

·      Business skills

·      Financial skills

·      Technical skills

·      Leadership

Steps in Project managements

Following are the major steps in Project managements

1.     Initiating

a.     Writing problem statement

b.     Project goal

                                               i.     Business objectives

                                              ii.     Technical objectives

                                            iii.     Financial objectives

                                            iv.     Quality objectives

                                              v.     Performance objectives

c.      Choosing strategies

d.     Gathering requirements

                                               i.     Prototyping

                                              ii.     Reusing the existing ideas

                                            iii.     Use cases

                                            iv.     Business process modeling

                                              v.     Interview

                                            vi.     Questionnaire

e.     Understanding the deliverables and milestones

f.      Identifying the risks and assumptions

g.     Understanding the scope of the project

h.     Identifying the stakeholders

i.       Obtaining the approval

j.       Writing project charter / storyboard

2.     Planning

a.     WBS

b.     Building Schedule

                                               i.     Prioritize the work

c.      Identifying resources

                                               i.     Human resources

                                              ii.     Budget resources

                                            iii.     Material resources

d.     Building budget

Budget should be neither too high nor too low but an appropriate amount that should cover the investment, employee cost and appropriate amount of profit for the company.

                                               i.     Planning team

                                              ii.     Expert

                                            iii.     Team members

                                            iv.     Previous projects

                                              v.     Parametric models

e.     Risk management Plane

f.      Communication Plan

g.     Quality management plan

h.     Change management plan

3.     Executing

a.     Procurement

                                               i.     Team ready

                                              ii.     Resource ready

b.     Managing team

                                               i.     Communicate roles and responsibilities of each member

                                              ii.     Give specific goals

                                            iii.     Provide support and help in case of obstacles

                                            iv.     Respecting the team members

                                              v.     Providing the feedback quickly

                                            vi.     Telling the truth, why the work is important

c.      Gathering data

d.     Evaluating progress

e.     Reporting progress

f.      Running meetings

4.     Monitoring and Controlling

5.     Closing

a.     Customer Acceptance

b.     Documentation acceptance

c.      Closing the contract

Approaches of Project Managements

There are two major approaches of project management. They are as follows:

1.     Traditional Method: When project requirements are clear and well understood then we can use traditional method. Waterfall method is one of the examples for traditional method.

2.     Agile Method: Agile methods are used when the client’s requirements are not obvious. We can use iterative methods. Iteration methods and spiral methods are examples of agile project management methods.

Project Management Tools

There are different types of tools that can be used in Project Management. Some of them are as follows:

·      Scheduling Software

o   MS- Excel

o   Microsoft Project

o   @Task

·      Documentation Software

o   MS-Word

o   Google Docs

·      Presentation Software

o   PowerPoint

o   Keynote

·      Collaboration Software

o   Basecamp

o   SharePoint