Characteristics and Importance of Project Management

Characteristics

Change oriented: Project management is a vehicle for planning and managing change in an organized manner. It adopts flexibility in doing things in a risky environment.

Objectives oriented: Project management is focused on achieving specific project objectives with customer satisfaction. It is results-oriented.

Single Responsibility Center: The project manager is the single responsibility center accountable for project outcomes. The role of project manager is crucial from inception to completion of the project. He is a project leader and champion. He motivates team members to excel.

Functional Coordination: Project management requires coordination along functional lines. The work flow is both vertical and horizontal in a matrix organization structure.

Planning and Control: Project management required integrated planning and control systems for continuous improvement.

Team-based: Project management consists of a multi-disciplinary project team with a wide range of skill and experiences. The team has project dedication. Each member has responsibility and accountability for a unit of work. Self-management is emphasized. So is member participation. The team membership is flexible and changes with project needs.

Constraints: Project management achieves results within the constraints of time, cost and quality. It is a time and resources limited activity. It is focused on customer needs.

Body of Knowledge: Project management consists of a body of knowledge like;

• Scope Management
• Time Management
• Change Management
• Integration Management
• Cost Management
• Quality Management
• Human Resource Management
• Conflict Management
• Risk Management
• Procurement Management

Importance of Project Management

Project management includes: Identifying requirements, establishing clear and achievable objectives, balancing the competing demands from the different stakeholders and ensuring that a commonality of purpose is achieved. It is clear that unless there is a structured and scientific approach to the practice of management, organizations would find themselves adrift in the Ocean called organizational development and hence would be unable to meet the myriad challenges that the modern era throws at them. Hence, the importance of project management to organizations cannot be emphasized more and the succeeding paragraphs provide some reasons why organizations must take the practice of project management seriously.

Without a scientific approach to the task of managing the projects and achieving objectives, it would be very difficult for the organizations to successfully execute the projects within the constraints of time, scope and quality and deliver the required result. In other words, there has to be a framework and a defined way of doing things to ensure that there is a structure to the art of project management.

Thus, project management is about creating structure and managing the project commitments and the delivery of agreed upon results. By using the methods of project management as described in the PMBOK and allied technical journals, organizations can seek to achieve control over the project environment and ensure that the project deliverables are being managed. Managers face what is known as the “triple constraint”. This is the competing demands of time, scope and quality upon the project manager’s list of things to do and how well the project manager manages these constraints goes a long way in determining the success of the project. Without the use of Project Management, managers and organizations would find themselves facing an unpredictable and chaotic environment over which they have little control. Thus, Project Management is both necessary and essential to the success of the project.

Improve internal communications

Working together can be hard. With more efficient project management processes, you can reduce the complexity of collaboration, increase transparency, and ensure accountability, even when you’re working across teams or departments.

Iterate on your successes

Project management helps you to scale high performance and build on your team’s best practices. By using the data and learnings from previous projects, you’re able to pinpoint where your team is excelling and where there’s room for improvement. And by measuring your KPIs you can create and track personalized benchmarks to understand how your team is performing project over project.

Save time and money

With the right planning, you can ensure that your work is delivered on time and within budget. Using project management methods, you can map your project’s journey from the outset and know in advance where the deadlines and projected spend are going to fall, so you can more efficiently allocate your resources, helping you to avoid delays and project overspend.

Make better business decisions

With clearer records of how your project is progressing, you get a deeper understanding of where your resources are being spent, what you need to prioritize and when, and if you’re at risk of going off track. Good project management means that you can forecast issues before they become issues, prevent bottlenecks, and make smarter, data-driven decisions.