Project Management

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Project Management

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management, http://www.pmi.org/Pages/default.aspx, http://www.projectmanagement.com/, http://managementhelp.org/plan_dec/project/project.htm, http://books.google.com.br/books?id=d4-zmyD4BL8C&dq=project+management&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=p2i_QVmfQS&sig=0KKSjoNsem3X4U-apisx2ASZInQ&hl=pt-BR&ei=sxgoStr8H6Cxtgeqv62kAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10#PPP1,M1
We all know what a project is. However, in a company, things get a little more serious than that new car you dream about. Still, in the end, all projects are the same: a finite endeavor, that is, a task, with an objective, which can be the creation of a product or service, for example.
When you have a very big and complex project, you will need a team to get the job done. Now, knowing people are different, we can assume they WORK differently and take different time to do things. In order to have this big and heterogeneous group do the job, you will need a manager, who needs to have experience and information on Project Management.
Project Management, or simply PM, is the subject that deals with standards and practices regarding the execution of a project. Now, what seems to be a simple idea, will take this manager hours of reading and preparation, for PM provides us with both a vast collection of models to help implement projects in various segments of business and industry and practical steps in case you get lost around the way.
Whether your project at work is big and complex and will take more than three years or if it’s just, say, the optimization of the routine in a small office, you will need to coordinate the various different tasks performed by the people in your team – remember: these tasks will all contribute to a common goal. One of the most common ways to do so is to write all the processes on the Gantt’s chart. If you never heard about it, the picture in this page will give you some north of what it is. This chart is a great tool because it not only shows us the dependence of processes and how their coordinated, but it also tells us how much of each task has been done. Consider it the PMO’s best friend. By the way, PMO stands for Project Management Office, which explained means a department in your company responsible for the whole management of a project, since allocating processes, to defining them and monitoring their progress.
Another very important issue in Project Management is time. Projects have a deadline. If yours don’t, simply call them dreams. The manager or the PMO needs to know exactly how much extra time a team will need to finish their task. This issue is, of course, not simple at all. Many things can happen and affect the timing of your project. In the worst scenario, you fail to meet the deadline and deliver the product or service to the public or to your CEO, which is not funny. In order to avoid such a headache, you can write down the minimum and the maximum estimated time using the Critical Path Method, illustrated by the chart on the left. The critical path is the longest amount of time a process can take to be done. If it takes longer than that you will have what we call a critical delay and will need to have some critical solutions up the sleeve.
Anyway, Project Management is a very complex subject, but it is a powerful tool when necessary. If you look at it from this angle, it is like Henry Ford’s assembly line applied to anything. So, going to your company’s project, it does not matter how complex it is, if you use this tool, it is manageable.
Never stop pursuing.