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Are You a Project Manager And Don’t Know It?
Today, everything is a project with more and more people finding themselves in a project management role of some type. You don’t have to have the title of Project Manager to manage projects.
A Project is a temporary collection of related tasks to achieve a desired and usually unique result.
What do you think? Do you find yourself managing a collection of related tasks to achieve a desired result? If so, you qualify as a project manager. Businesses today are evolving, downsizing, and pushing more work down the organization chart.  You may be a project manager and not know it.  But what if you haven’t been trained as a Project Manager with the necessary skill and tool sets?
This month, we’re going to talk about the project management process and try to answer some questions that every project manager (or would-be project manager) should have the answer to:
- What is project management?
- What are the five phases of project management?
- What are some project management tools and methods?
What Is Project Management?
Projects are unique events and not processes, yet project management is definitely a process and not a unique event.
Project Management is a disciplined utilization of tools and methods for successfully describing, organizing, and controlling a project.
Project management is a structured process of disciplined actions that follows a common Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle found within the five phases of project management.
What Are the Five Phases of Project Management?
- 1. Project Initiation
- 2. Project Planning
- 3. Project Execution
- 4. Project Monitoring & Control
- 5. Project Review & Close
Figure 1 Project Management Document Map
All projects go through the same five project management phases that typically culminates in some type of project management phase review (see Figure 1, Document Map). Each project management phase has a distinct purpose, importance, and set of outputs designed to ensure that the project manager is moving the project toward the desired result.
Following a disciplined project management process should help you to eliminate common project issues resulting from poor buy-in, projects consistently going wrong, failing to learn from past project mistakes, or difficulty in getting your projects approved.
Project management begins with the “Project Initiation” phase.  Next week, we’ll describe this first phase — its purpose, inputs, and outputs — in some detail. In the following weeks, we’ll explore the remaining phases of project management — planning, execution, monitoring & control, and close & review.
Related Articles:
- Has Your Process Procedures Project Stalled?
- Project Management – The Final Phases: III, IV, & V
- Project Management Phase II: Project Planning
- Project Management Phase I: Project Initiation
- How You Can Learn to be a Better Manager
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September 22nd, 2009 at 5:51 am
I am currently trying to revamp a project which was abandoned by funding partners in zimbabwe because of political uncertainty. Now that the political environment has improved I would want to revisit this water project, write a project proposal to the funding partners and see what happens. I am sure with information I have managed to get from this website I could come up with something convincing. The project concerns the provision of water to villagers. Water tanks were built but not completed and the whole project abandoned. If this project succeeds it will improve the livelihoods of the villagers my own parents included.