The Basics of Project Management

The task of project management often requires specific knowledge, skills, and expertise, which is why it is not a position that is easily filled up in a company.  The projects a company undertakes are often a major part of how the institution makes revenue and profit, making project management quite an essential part of overall operations.  As the job title would suggest, the project manager is in charge of every aspect of the project, from deciding the best way to start the project, determining what particular business model would best suit the project, seeking out and tapping the needed resources, and ensuring that execution of tasks are done in a timely manner, and be able to respond effectively to whatever contingencies may come up during the project.  All of these are important facets of the project that the project manager must be able to respond to as soon as it comes up, so as to ensure that operations continue smoothly, there is no disruption in the production, and problems which may potentially lead to bigger issues in the near future are dealt with promptly.  Being a project manager necessarily dictates that the person always be on top of things, and this even includes the times normally classified as “downtime”.  This being said, there are specific points in a project that the project manager needs to always consider before undertaking the project itself, which are, incidentally, also key points that are covered in e learning modules that primarily deal in project management:

The kick off

There is, of course, a need to discuss the project will al pertinent members of the team that will be undertaking the project itself, often dubbed as the kick off.  In some cases, the kick off also necessarily entails talking with the client that contracted the services of the team to complete the project.  The kick off is typically where the initial details and particulars of the project is laid out for everyone involved in the project to see.  This is where ideas are often stoked into gaining more meat onto them, until they are fully formed into useful concepts and plans for the project.

The digestion

After the initial kick off of the project, team members are allowed to prepare for the tasks which fall to them.  This is the period where team members try to “digest” what was discussed in the kick off, and then visualize how best to approach the task set before them.  It is in the digestion period that the questions also typically pop up, since this is also where the unforeseen contingencies and problems become apparent.  This appearance of unforeseen questions also serves as the analysis phase of the project, since each member of the team will try to run scenarios involving their tasks and try to project where the problems may arise, allowing them ample time to prepare for such eventuality.

Testing phase

There is also a need for a testing phase, to see if what the team proposes will work, will indeed work as it is supposed to, if at all.  The testing phase is needed to determine if the job being done is something that will produce the needed results, rather than continuing doing something that may actually turn up to be the wrong thing and then just finding out it was wrong near the end of the project.  Testing allows for whatever tweaks or changes to be made before the project completion, where all the efforts could just prove to be a spectacular waste if it were being done wrong.

Surprisingly enough, a lot of e learning modules are patterned similarly, allowing for an actual training that is similar to the more effective methods used in proper project management.