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Project management

Project management is the process of leading the work of a team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints.[1] This information is usually described in project documentation, created at the beginning of the development process. The primary constraints are scope, time, and budget.[2] The secondary challenge is to optimize the allocation of necessary inputs and apply them to meet pre-defined objectives.

Not to be confused with Product management.

The objective of project management is to produce a complete project which complies with the client's objectives. In many cases, the objective of project management is also to shape or reform the client's brief to feasibly address the client's objectives. Once the client's objectives are established, they should influence all decisions made by other people involved in the project– for example, project managers, designers, contractors, and subcontractors. Ill-defined or too tightly prescribed project management objectives are detrimental to decision-making.


A project is a temporary and unique endeavor designed to produce a product, service, or result with a defined beginning and end (usually time-constrained, and often constrained by funding or staffing) undertaken to meet unique goals and objectives, typically to bring about beneficial change or added value.[3][4] The temporary nature of projects stands in contrast with business as usual (or operations),[5] which are repetitive, permanent, or semi-permanent functional activities to produce products or services. In practice, the management of such distinct production approaches requires the development of distinct technical skills and management strategies.[6]

Project management types[edit]

Project management methods can be applied to any project. It is often tailored to a specific type of project based on project size, nature, industry or sector. For example, the construction industry, which focuses on the delivery of things like buildings, roads, and bridges, has developed its own specialized form of project management that it refers to as construction project management and in which project managers can become trained and certified.[17] The information technology industry has also evolved to develop its own form of project management that is referred to as IT project management and which specializes in the delivery of technical assets and services that are required to pass through various lifecycle phases such as planning, design, development, testing, and deployment. Biotechnology project management focuses on the intricacies of biotechnology research and development.[18] Localization project management includes application of many standard project management practices to translation works even though many consider this type of management to be a very different discipline. For example, project managers have a key role in improving the translation even when they do not speak the language of the translation, because they know the study objectives well to make informed decisions.[19] Similarly, research study management can also apply a project manage approach.[20] There is public project management that covers all public works by the government, which can be carried out by the government agencies or contracted out to contractors. Another classification of project management is based on the hard (physical) or soft (non-physical) type.


Common among all the project management types is that they focus on three important goals: time, quality, and cost. Successful projects are completed on schedule, within budget, and according to previously agreed quality standards i.e. meeting the Iron Triangle or Triple Constraint in order for projects to be considered a success or failure.[21]


For each type of project management, project managers develop and utilize repeatable templates that are specific to the industry they're dealing with. This allows project plans to become very thorough and highly repeatable, with the specific intent to increase quality, lower delivery costs, and lower time to deliver project results.

Plan: The planning and forecasting activities.

Process: The overall approach to all activities and project governance.

People: Including dynamics of how they collaborate and communicate.

Power: Lines of authority, decision-makers, organograms, policies for implementation and the like.

Initiation

Planning

Production or execution

Monitoring and controlling

Closing

Structural complexity (also known as detail complexity, or complicatedness), i.e. consisting of many varied interrelated parts. It is typically expressed in terms of size, variety, and interdependence of project components, and described by technological and organizational factors.

[57]

Dynamic complexity refers to phenomena, characteristics, and manifestations such as ambiguity, uncertainty, propagation, emergence, and chaos.

[54]

the perspective of the process, i.e. delivering efficient outputs; typically called project management performance or project efficiency.

the perspective of the result, i.e. delivering beneficial outcomes; typically called project performance (sometimes just project success).[68][69]

[67]

There is a tendency to confuse the project success with project management success. They are two different things. "Project success" has 2 perspectives:


Project management success criteria are different from project success criteria. The project management is said to be successful if the given project is completed within the agreed upon time, met the agreed upon scope and within the agreed upon budget. Subsequent to the triple constraints, multiple constraints have been considered to ensure project success. However, the triple or multiple constraints indicate only the efficiency measures of the project, which are indeed the project management success criteria during the project lifecycle.


The priori criteria leave out the more important after-completion results of the project which comprise four levels i.e. the output (product) success, outcome (benefits) success and impact (strategic) success during the product lifecycle. These posterior success criteria indicate the effectiveness measures of the project product, service or result, after the project completion and handover. This overarching multilevel success framework of projects, programs and portfolios has been developed by Paul Bannerman in 2008.[70] In other words, a project is said to be successful, when it succeeds in achieving the expected business case which needs to be clearly identified and defined during the project inception and selection before starting the development phase. This multilevel success framework conforms to the theory of project as a transformation depicted as the input-process / activity-output-outcome-impact in order to generate whatever value intended. Emanuel Camilleri in 2011 classifies all the critical success and failure factors into groups and matches each of them with the multilevel success criteria in order to deliver business value.[71]


An example of a performance indicator used in relation to project management is the "backlog of commissioned projects" or "project backlog".[72]

The ISO standards , a family of standards for quality management systems, and the ISO 10006:2003, for Quality management systems and guidelines for quality management in projects.

ISO 9000

:2012 – Guidance on project management. This is the first International Standard related to project management published by ISO. Other standards in the 21500 family include 21503:2017 Guidance on programme management; 21504:2015 Guidance on portfolio management; 21505:2017 Guidance on governance; 21506:2018 Vocabulary; 21508:2018 Earned value management in project and programme management; and 21511:2018 Work breakdown structures for project and programme management.

ISO 21500

ISO 21502:2020 Project, programme and portfolio management — Guidance on project management

ISO 21503:2022 Project, programme and portfolio management — Guidance on programme management

ISO 21504:2015 Project, programme and portfolio management – Guidance on portfolio management

ISO 21505:2017 Project, programme and portfolio management - Guidance on governance

:2009 – Risk management.

ISO 31000

ISO/IEC/IEEE 16326:2009 – Systems and Software Engineering—Life Cycle Processes—Project Management

[77]

Individual Competence Baseline (ICB) from the International Project Management Association (IPMA).

[78]

(CMM) from the Software Engineering Institute.

Capability Maturity Model

GAPPS, – an open source standard describing COMPETENCIES for project and program managers.

Global Alliance for Project Performance Standards

Swiss general project management method, selected for use in Luxembourg and international organizations.

HERMES method

The (LFA), which is popular in international development organizations.

logical framework approach

from the Project Management Institute (PMI).

PMBOK Guide

from AXELOS.

PRINCE2

PM2: The Project Management methodology developed by the [European Commission].

[79]

Procedures for Project Formulation and Management (PPFM) by the Indian Ministry of Defence

[80]

(TSP) from the Software Engineering Institute.

Team Software Process

Framework, AACE International's Methodology for Integrated Portfolio, Program and Project Management.

Total Cost Management

an original systems development method.

V-Model

There are several project management standards, including:

Virtual project management[edit]

Virtual program management (VPM) is management of a project done by a virtual team, though it rarely may refer to a project implementing a virtual environment[84] It is noted that managing a virtual project is fundamentally different from managing traditional projects,[85] combining concerns of remote work and global collaboration (culture, time zones, language).[86]

Agile construction

Architectural engineering

Construction management

Cost engineering

Facilitation (business)

Industrial engineering

Project Production Management

Project management software

Project portfolio management

Project management office

Project workforce management

Software project management

Systems engineering

from the UK Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR)

Guidelines for Managing Projects

PM BLOG

PM Foundation