Project Management: An Initiative Toward Development of Employees and the Company

In the current business environment, the demand for project managers is ever growing. In short, project management is a provisional project constrained by time, cost and scope (A guide to the project management body of knowledge, 2013). Between the immense organization, optimization, and communication assets skilled project management brings to a project, it is easy to see why project management is a booming field of study. Furthermore, project management can be both financially and personally rewarding when long term milestones and goals come to fruition.

Successful organizations are always looking for ways to improve process and procedures, increase revenues and profits, while staying relevant in today’s business world. Strong leadership is the backbone of any organization and is the catalyst for driving a culture of innovation and change. Organizations looking to make small or large-scale changes typically do so through the implementation of work projects. Projects are collaborative efforts carefully planned and designed to achieve a specific goal. According to Young (2010), “projects take careful planning, and a successful project is one that is done on time and within budget” (p.344). Project management is the activity of planning, organizing, motivating, and controlling resources, while monitoring procedures and timelines, and usually has an assigned project manager (PM). Organizations such as Apple are known to have many projects in motion at any given time. This many projects happening simultaneously can be extremely complex, expensive, and taxing on resources, but somehow Apple has managed to implement project after project with huge success.

In his book, Project Management for Dummies (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2013) Stanley E. Portny helps others recognize the basics of successful project management. He provides the necessary information to plan and manage projects as well as providing important guidelines to develop and use the information. Project management includes dealing with a variety of people and tips are given to help identify and involve key players. This book navigates the critical tools needed to support project planning, scheduling, budgeting, organizing and controlling.

In this paper the word ‘project” is defined, discussed and elaborated on. The phases of a project lifecycle and its purpose are to be discussed, and how it is important for organizations to use project management to accomplish tasks will in conclusion be discussed thoroughly. The indisputable word ‘Project” may be defined in numerous unusual ways, some can all have the same meaning and others can mislead a reader. The definition that accurately explains what a project is, comes from the Houghton Mifflin Company (2009) website stating; “something that is contemplated, devised, or planned; plan; scheme.” A definition that can mislead a reader is this definition from the same website just two paragraphs

2-15-99 Project Management: The Managerial Process COMPREHENSIVE TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE CHAPTER 1 Modern Project Management What is a project? The project life cycle The project manager The importance of project management Snapshot from practice: The best wireless phone in the world Snapshot from practice: The emergence of e.Schwab The evolution of project management systems Project management today-- An integrative approach Integration of projects with the strategic plan Integration within the process of managing actual projects Research Highlights: Chaos: Software Projects Summary Text overview Review questions & exercises Case:

A good project management plan takes some preparation it includes the basic concepts of proper planning, organization and great project manager management skills. It includes a variety of resources that come together to achieve a certain goal. As project manager it is imperative that he or she deliver the necessary results within the time limitation as well as within the allotted budget. Effective project managers allocate certain aspects of the project to their team in order to ensure the project’s success.

The project life cycle consists of the conceptualization phase, the planning phase, the execution phase, and the termination phase.

Project management is a discipline that applies various tools, concepts, principles, practices, activities that help in improving the profitability of organization and results in overall growth. It helps organizations working in various parts of the world in integrating there operations and achieving goals. The project management concepts are based on principles of rationality in human behavior, and similarity of working culture over organizations that is a bit unrealistic due to differences in Environmental Factors such as legal, political factors,

Describe the main phases of the project lifecycle. Critically discuss where in this lifecycle failures may occur and explain how effective project management might reduce their likelihood.

Project management is an essential part of businesses and industries in order to advance ahead and add value to products. Project management enables companies to innovate, plan strategically, and for the economy to progress. The important parts of projects are often values such as team working, planning, innovation, time and budget management, and leadership. In the modern society, some projects can be pharmaceuticals (inventing new drugs), IT solutions (new technologies), energy and environment (other sources of energy such as solar), and military (new weapons and machines). The similarities are such that these projects are undertaken to improve the lives of

Using project management offers a business a way for dealing with considerably lowered phase times. With businesses operating internationally projects that can have an effect on the company as a whole are not easy to manage without a proper line of attack. For this, project management would help cross functional teams to be more successful.

To control the process of a project and manage the operation of a project, the theory of project management life cycle is widely used in nowadays business administration. Treating the whole time dimension of the project as a life cycle, project management life cycle separates the project to some steps and uses checkpoint, milestone and base line to control the operation of the project. This article will be a general introduction of project management life cycle theory and will use an example to show the practice of project management life cycle in a real business project.

Project management is a series of steps taken in sequence to manage a project through all phases from conception to completion. The steps are documented in a strategic plan. The plan is used to ensure that all parties are working towards a common goal. Project management requires applying knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to specific activities in accordance with established standards and guidelines. There are five basic functions of project management: planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling. Basic activities of project management include: identifying project requirements to define the outcomes; addressing various needs, concerns and expectations of others; setting up, maintaining and carrying out communications; managing others; creating project deliverables; and balancing competing project constraints.

Regardless of a business size and type, or its product line and/or services, organizational structure and effective communication across all levels are key components of project management best practices and are essential for organizational success. One approach organizations can take to enhance its business practices is to adopt and implement a comprehensive project management system, capable of addressing organizational project requirements at various levels; small, medium and large scale projects. According to Diab (2012), project management systems are commonplace in large organizations and are rarely implemented in small and medium size companies. One could equally contend that even though the

The paper is divided into three sections, the first of which will establish a timeline of events. This project background will serve as a case study for the analysis in the following section that will be structured such that each of the previously mentioned facets will be independently analyzed and contrasted with project management principles. Finally the paper will conclude with a summary of the analysis and recommendations based on