“I’ve got a lot to do and little time to do it in.”
“I know there will be costs involved, but I’m not sure how much.”
“Something could go wrong, but I don’t know how I might cope with it.”
Without thinking about it, you are thinking like a project manager. More specifically, you are thinking along the lines of the “triple constraint” which is …
1) Time – the project is time-limited, i.e. it must be completed within a specific length of time.
2) Cost – the project is cost-limited, i.e. it must be completed within a specific budget.
3) Performance – the project is performance-limited, i.e. it must be completed within a specified set of expectations and specifications.
Whether you are planning a birthday party, building a house, or planting a garden, adherence to the principles of
project management will serve you well as you work toward completion of the tasks at hand as part of your overall effort.
Recently, project management has added a fourth constraint or consideration to the three constraints. This fourth emphasis is on customer satisfaction. Every project has as its focus a customer or client. It is the customer or client who benefits directly from the project being carried out.
Now that I have basically defined project management, why do we study project management or what good is project management anyway? At Beckfield College, project management is taught as an interdisciplinary subject, because the skills learned in project management are essential in planning projects which are part of most, if not all, professional disciplines.
As you can tell thus far, you have probably managed a project at some point in your life’s activities, although you may not have formally recognized nor called what you did as project management. As an academic discipline, project management is a temporary process performed over a finite period of time with a definite beginning and end. It is a job that, as project manager, your objective is to work yourself out of a job as effectively and efficiently as possible. As the cable guy says, your job is strictly to “git ‘er done!”
The online source for all things regarding project management is at the
Project Management Institute Web site. The PMI publishes
A Guide To The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) which is the primary source book for project management theory and practice. This text is must reading for students of project management, because it prepares the student for the critical thinking necessary to manage a multi-step project of several hundred to multiple millions of dollars.
After becoming oriented to the basic concepts of project and budgeting management, the project manager moves to implementation of the project or begins to carry out the plan. In other words, we are moving along the
project management plan life cycle from need identification, solution development, project performance, and project termination. This life cycle applies, too, to all projects, big or small, simple or complex. Again, whether the project is big or small, it moves through these four stages or processes.
Utilizing the concepts and application of project management when planning your next project, will help you manage the time, cost, performance and quality/customer expectation issues in an organized and effective manner. Rather than finding yourself running around as the proverbial “chicken with his head cut off,” you will find that as a project manager you will manage your project through its life cycle in a smooth, manageable fashion.
Raymond Schklar, BA, MBA
Faculty Member, Beckfield College
Department of Business & Technology