WHAT IS PROJECT MANAGEMENT?
Project management is about establishing what is in scope and out of scope of a project and subsequently organizing and managing resources in such a way that specific goals and objectives are achieved within a certain set of criteria.
Project management is the art and science of making a project’s vision come alive and getting things done—more so than determining what the vision itself is. Of course, there will be no project without a vision and clear objectives, but determining the “why and what” of a project is more a concern for the customer or change manager than for the project manager.
You could say that change management provides the project’s vision and is concerned with the human impact of change, whereas project management is related to how that vision is executed. These two disciplines go hand in hand and are both concerned with the transformation process between a present and a future state. The more experienced you become, the more likely it is that you will take on the role of a change manager in addition to your role as project manager.
Project management involves many different types of activities that all serve the purpose of ensuring that the project’s vision is executed and turned into reality within certain time, quality, and budget constraints. These activities relate to planning and coordinating tasks and to directing and supervising people. Scope and deliverables need to be specified, estimated, and executed, and quality must be assured. Risks, issues, and change requests need to be effectively managed, and a significant amount of time needs to be spent liaising with stakeholders and ensuring that the team remains focused and motivated.
In accordance with the philosophy that you manage tasks and lead people, it could be argued that project management contains an equal number of management and leadership activities. On that basis, we could go on to define project management as:
The management role that defines, plans, coordinates, and controls a project’s scope and operational activities, and the leadership role that inspires and focuses everyone contributing to the successful completion of the project’s goals and objectives.
To become a highly valued and truly successful project management leader, you need to be an excellent manager as well as a good leader. You must be able to access and make use of both skill sets, depending on the immediate need and the situation to which you are responding. In addition, you must be excellent at managing your time and consistently focus on the right activities. Some of the activities you engage in are essential to the dynamics and ongoing progress of the project and must be completed by you. Others are less important and could potentially be delegated to someone else.
Doing something very well that does not need to be done at all is a poor use of time. Before starting any activity, check how important it is to the overall success of the project or to the functioning of the team. Aim to always focus on the highest-value activities and delegate or defer the others. The tasks and activities that matter the most must never be at the mercy of the tasks and activities that matter the least.
Exercise: Project Management Activities
1. Brainstorm all of the tasks and activities that, in your experience, form part of a project manager’s job. Consider aspects that relate to the management of tasks as well as people. Write them down on a separate piece of paper.
2. Write each of the project management activities you identified in the leftmost column of the table below.
3. Assign a high, medium, or low rating to each activity depending on how much you believe it benefits your current project.
4. Next, assign each activity a high, medium, or low rating depending on how much you personally enjoy the activity.
5. Indicate how many hours per week you typically spend on each activity.
6. Look at how you rated the activities in terms of how much benefit they add to your current project. Which activities have you identified as adding the most benefit?
7. Which of the high-benefit activities do you need to spend relatively more time on in order to maximize your value to the project, and which lower-value activities can you spend less time on?
8. Examine the items that add a lot of benefit but which you do not particularly enjoy doing. How can you either make them more enjoyable or delegate them to someone else without jeopardizing the success of the project?
9. To add more weight to this exercise, talk it through with your manager. Get her views on what your tasks and responsibilities are and what you need to be spending relatively more or less time on.
