Table of Contents
Introduction
To understand the concept of project management, the first thing you have to know is what is meant by the project in the business environment. The explanation is straightforward: a project is nothing more than the sum of actions used to develop a business idea. Do not forget, in any case, that this idea must have commercial and financial viability and must also respond to a vision both short and medium and long term.
In this sense, practically anything your company does, from optimizing an internal process to executing external work commissioned by a client, can remain considered a project. That is why projects are a fundamental part of the daily activity of a company, and guaranteeing their success is essential for everything to go well.
Description :
Project Management builds on establishing, executing and monitoring the fulfillment of specific, achievable, measurable and realistic achievements that lead to accomplishing valuable tasks for the organization. It is done with three objectives always in mind:
- Control the start and evolution of a project.
- Detect problems that may arise and find ways to solve them.
- Lead towards the finalization and final approval of the project.
Advantages of Project Management
Project management will bring a series of positive aspects that will help your company to progress:
Maximize the operational capacity of the company. By managing projects, you increase the efficiency of your daily work since all tasks are adjusted to increase your productivity. In addition, communication between the different areas of the company is encouraged, allowing all members of your organization, especially those involved in construction project management, to know in detail what their responsibility is and to stay able to focus on it. All this translates into reducing both the time required to fulfill the tasks and the associated costs.
Coordinate resources. This improvement in communication can help, for example, that the company’s different areas that work with the same supplier combine their activity, making it more efficient.
It gives an overview of the company. Knowledge can remain transferred between the different departments, preventing them from acting independently. With this, it is possible to know the work team’s natural capacity, identify weaknesses and risks. And also, more quickly to enable their correction, and prioritize the areas that need it most.
It provides a point of view focused on the client since the project’s ultimate objective is to cover a specific need. However, the client has, insofar as it is the one that contributes economic resources to your company.
Types of Project Management
There are numerous methodologies when applying project management. Which one to choose will depend on the specific characteristics and needs of your company. Here are some of the most popular:
Traditional Sequential. It builds on completing the phases of the project in order, without starting the next one until the previous one has complete. In this way, a control document generates to verify the fulfillment of the planned objectives. The main advantage is that, precisely, it facilitates monitoring by those in charge of ensuring that each phase is fulfilling. As a drawback, it is too rigid, and if a previous error creates at some point, it is almost inevitable to start over from the beginning.
Agile Methodology: It means “agile” in English. Its name is because it is not a strict methodology. After all, the requirements presented by the organization and the proposed solutions are not constant but may change over time. It reduces planning time and is more flexible, although it can lead to budget overruns. And does not generate much helpful documentation in the future.
Change Management. Project management methodologies based on this trend focus on planning risks in taking control when these changes occur. Some of the best known are Event Chain Methodology and Extreme Project Management.
Process-based Methodologies. They are methods that approach work as a set of interconnected processes, seeking specific objectives for all of them. For example, Lean Manufacturing aims to simplify tasks and reduce waste, Six Sigma aims to reduce errors in procedures to zero. And also, the intermediate Lean Six Sigma formula combines both approaches.
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