FAQ

1.  What is project management?

It is the “application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities in order to meet or exceed stakeholder needs and expectations from a project.”
Source:  Project Management Institute (PMI) Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK)

2.  Why use project management?

For companies:

  • To meet company/customer timing and resource constraints
  • To reduce inefficiencies and costs
  • To improve discipline and professionalism amongst employees
  • To improve project co-ordination between all departments
  • To identify potential problem areas in advance rather than crisis management

For individuals:

  • To plan, organize, and control your work more effectively
  • To manage your own responsibilities
  • To enhance communication skills
  • To help achieve company goals and objectives
  • Have ownership and accountability for your own work tasks

 

3.  What are the central supports of project management?

  • Timing
  • Resources
  • Costs
  • Management

4.  What are the principal steps?

  • Obtain authorization from project sponsor
  • Establish team with commitment to objectives
  • Establish project plan of agreed expectations and deliverables
  • Define the project activities and key milestones
  • Assign responsibility to activities (“who’s doing what when”)
  • Assign logical relationships
  • Calculate the project schedule
  • Implement plan maintenance and update cycle

5.  What are the benefits of project management?

Timing:

  • Dynamic planning, control and management of work
  • Identifies activity start/finish dates, critical path, float
  • Identify and monitor activity progress/slippage
  • Outlines impact of timing constraints
  • Status vs. Target Analysis
  • Can help towards smaller project “cycle times”

Resources:

  • Dynamic planning, control and management of resources
  • Accurate planning of current and future workloads
  • Supplier accountability and tracking
  • Global planning of resources over one or many projects or locations
  • Justification of future resource requirements

Costs:

  • Accurate control and management of costs summarized by project, plant, supplier etc.
  • Early warning of potential cost overruns
  • Cost comparisons between suppliers/in-house
  • Identify budget reserves and undistributed funds

Management:

  • Monitor important elements of the business without becoming submerged heavily into detail
  • Control multiple projects running simultaneously
  • Efficient control of budgets and resources
  • Ensure a high quality structured business approach