What is Project Management? The Basics

Project Management is all about organizing and running projects successfully. It’s how teams plan, manage, and complete a project. From small tasks to big plans, project management keeps things moving smoothly.

Key Steps in Project Management

1. Initiation: This phase involves the formal start of the project, defining its purpose and scope, identifying potential challenges, and establishing achievable goals.
2. Planning: A crucial stage where detailed project plans are developed, encompassing schedules, resource allocation, budgeting, and risk management strategies.
3. Execution: The execution phase brings the project plan to life, focusing on coordinating people and resources to carry out the project plan.
4. Monitoring and Controlling: This ongoing process ensures that project objectives are met by monitoring progress and performance, identifying any areas that require changes or adjustments.
5. Closing: The final phase involves the formal completion and closure of the project, including the handover of deliverables and the assessment of lessons learned.

Common Methods

• Agile: This method is all about being flexible and making changes easily. A flexible, iterative approach focused on delivering small, incremental changes. Common in software development, it’s adaptable to changing project requirements.
• Waterfall: A step-by-step approach. Finish one thing, then move to the next. A linear and sequential approach where each stage depends on the completion of the previous one. Suitable for projects with well-defined objectives and stable requirements.
• Scrum: A way to handle complex projects, working in small teams. A subset of Agile, this methodology is used for managing complex projects, typically in software development, where it promotes a flexible and collaborative working style.

Key Takeaways

Project Management helps teams get things done. It’s about planning, doing, checking, and finishing work effectively.