0.6 What is project management?

You’ve determined that you have a project. What now? The notes you scribbled down on the back of the napkin at lunch are a start, but not exactly good project management practice. Too often, organizations follow Nike’s advice when it comes to managing projects when they “just do it.” An assignment is made and the project team members jump directly into the development of the product or service requested. In the end the delivered product doesn’t meet the expectations of the customer. Unfortunately, many projects follow this poorly constructed path and that is a primary contributor to why a large percentage of projects don’t meet their original objectives defined by performance, schedule, and budget.

In the United States, more than $250 billion dollars is spent each year on IT application development in approximately 175,000 projects. The Standish Group (a Boston-based leader in project and value performance research) just released the summary version of their 2009 CHAOS Report that tracks project failure rates across a broad range of companies and industries ( [link] ).

Jim Johnson, chairman of the Standish Group has stated that “this year’s results show a marked decrease in project success rates, with 32% of all projects succeeding which are delivered on time, on budget, with required features and functions, 44% were challenged which are late, over budget, and/or with less than the required features and functions and 24% failed which are cancelled prior to completion or delivered and never used.”

When are companies going to stop wasting billions of dollars on failed projects? The vast majority of this waste is completely avoidable; simply get the right business needs (requirements) understood early in the process and ensure that project management techniques are applied and followed and the project activities are monitored.

Applying good project management discipline is the way to help reduce the risks. But keep in mind, having good project management skills does not mean you have no problems, it does not mean that risks go away, or that there won’t be any surprises. The value of good project management is that you have standard processes in place to deal with all contingencies.

Project Management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques applied to project activities in order to meet the project requirements. Project management is a process that includes planning, putting the project plan into action, and measuring progress and performance.

Managing a project includes identifying your project’s requirements; writing down what everyone needs from the project. What are the objectives for your project? When everyone understands the goal, it’s much easier to keep them all on the right path. Make sure you set goals that everyone agrees on to avoid team conflicts later on. Understanding and addressing the needs of everyone affected by the project means the end result of your project is far more likely to satisfy your stakeholders, and last but not least, as project manager you will also be balancing the many competing project constraints.