Business project management explained

As organizations progress, they face more and more complex and difficult challenges. Some of these are huge involving the coordination of many different people, the completion of many tasks in a strict sequence, and the spending of a great deal of time and money.

Today's most successful organizations employ Project Management as a strategic tool to drive change and achieve business objectives. Focusing primarily on developing a project plan with specific goals and objectives, Project Management assists an organization to deliver projects that fit-for purpose, timely and within budget.

Project Management is the tool to allocate specific tasks and to manage available resources in order to deliver projects that adhere to project deadlines for each project phase. To do that, Project Management typically includes four phases, which are feasibility study, project planning, implementation, and project evaluation.

Phase I: Feasibility study

Organizations perform feasibility studies in order to research business opportunities. By defining the needs of the project, a feasibility study basically addresses the issue of adaptability to new market realities. Organizations use needs analysis as the tool to investigate the market supply and demand, niche markets, environmental effects, positioning, and sustainability.

After the project needs have been identified, feasibility study documents the requirements for solution, identifies alternative solutions, assesses risks associated to each solution and chooses the optimal solution for the implementation of the project.

Phase II: Project Planning

Project planning requires primarily analytical techniques and distinct technical skills in order to manage a project within specific start and completion dates, while meeting specific requirements in terms of cost and optimal resources. The adoption of agreed standards and regularized procedures assists to manage the project constraints to achieve the project goals and objectives.

Phase III: Project Implementation

Successful project implementation addresses simultaneously four interrelated constraints, namely resources, time, cost and scope. These constrains are interdependent because if a project needs to be completed within a tight time frame this would mean increased cost for the organization. Similarly, if  the project is big, then cost constraint would be increased and time constraint would be pressing.

The resources constraint refers to the people, the equipment and the material used to set up the project, allocate tasks and perform the steps required to develop and complete the project.

The time constraint refers to the time required for the project completion and it involves the tasks durations, the interdependencies between tasks and the critical path that needs to be applied in order to complete each task on time without delaying the series of the tasks that follow.

The cost constraint refers to the budget of the project involving the financial resources available to finance the project until the completion date.

The scope constraint refers to the project itself as it involves the project size, objectives and goals and specific requirements.

Phase IV: Project Evaluation

Project evaluation investigates if the objectives and goals of the project are met effectively, timely and within budget. The project objectives define the project target and they involve all necessary steps to achieve the planned benefits. In the phase of project evaluation, Project Management deals with Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time bounded objectives (SMART), which facilitate the evaluation of the project.

Project Management answers questions such as when the project should be undertaken, how much it will cost, what can we do if it slips from the original time frame, what are the bottlenecks involved and how we will mitigate and reduce any lost revenues occurring from delays at any project phase.

To my view, the most important consideration of Project Management is communication. Apart from having a clearly defined scope and a focus on quality, most of the time spent should be in keeping expectations in line with the existing understanding of reality both inside and outside of the project team. It is also about setting the foundation for future advancement and projects, and developing new skills and capabilities in the team.