A Step-by-step Beginner’s Guide to Project Management

Whether you are a freelancer, a marketer, an IT professional, a creative director or someone who's just stepped into a manager's role, project management is significant in achieving business goals. It helps enhance organizational efficacy, improve team performance and affect the bottom line.

Though, not all are project managers, even if it's common in all business aspects. However, understanding its complex terminologies and concepts can aid you in taking your project managing career to the next level.

In today's article, we will see in detail the definition of project management, its vitality, roles and responsibilities of these managers, different project stages, management methodologies and many more.

People familiar with a few of these terms can skip to the main part; this blog mainly focuses on offering beginners an insight into project management, like the main title, a beginner's guide. So, let's begin!!!!!

What is Project Management?

It is a segment in an entire organization’s workflow, where the project is planned, monitored, managed and reported. Without the relevant resources, scope and money, a project will not succeed. Project managers must ensure that all these conditions are tackled, accounted and leveraged when necessary.

Each project has a particular start and completion date. For a project to have a successful delivery, the proven management processes include the following:

• Plan and schedule
• Management of resource
• Risk management
• Task controlling and monitoring
• Reporting

The project management techniques are leveraged in all kinds of industry verticals irrespective of their sizes, each with its own unique methods to complete the tasks and achieve targets. To offer desired deliverables and meet clients' demands, project managers and the team are responsible for the planning and execution of a project.

Why Project Management is Significant?

According to PMI.org, companies that don't value project management have noted 67% of project failures. Moreover, the report highlights that poor project management resulted in an 11% investment wastage.

Project management is significant as it sets your project from being out of scope. Let us look at some of why project management is vital for an organization.

• Minimizes project delivery risks
• Creates plans for project execution and meet business objectives
• Enhances planning by offering realistic work measures
• extract insights from previous projects
• Ensuring alignments between the team and the delivered value
• Offers project direction and leadership
• Ensures that the project sticks to the given schedule
• Ensure seamless interaction between the project team and the end-users

What are the Roles of Project Management?

A project doesn't happen in isolation; instead requires professionals to execute them. Some of the traditional project management roles are as follows:

Project Manager

They are responsible for planning, monitoring, and managing a project. Moreover, project managers also lead their team, manage suppliers, and guide the project towards successful delivery.

Program Manager

The project manager, be it a single entity or more, has to report to a program manager, as they are in charge of a set of related projects.

Account Manager

They are senior managers, also known to be the project sponsors, responsible for the project deliverables. They are the client's communication source and a single point of contact between end-users and the project team.

Team Members

They are skilled professionals responsible for the project execution and the deliverable production.

Suppliers

External teams authorize part of the project when skilled professionals are not available.

Shareholders

These people, either directly or indirectly, are impacted by the project. Their feedback and input are strived to define the deliverables of a project.

Project Portfolio Managers

Like the name, these managers are responsible for the project management belonging to one or more clients across the company.

What are the Roles of Project Managers?

Project managers are the plan coordinators who ensure that significant resources and members are leveraged to their utmost potential for target achievement in the optimal period.

We had seen the roles of project management, now let us know what a project manager does?

Report Management

A potential project manager knows that post-project reports are vital for ensuring all the project prerequisites are delivered and about the future methodology and plan enhancement.

Team Organization

These managers ensure that they have suitable skillsets for the task, and they leverage team members wherever appropriate. Project managers create plans that direct people towards task completion and achieving business objectives and empower the team to realize their capability.

Budgeting

It's essential to deliver a project that meets clients' demands and is delivered on time. By chance you exceed the project budget, your project will be considered a failure. A project manager must know how to prepare, control and ensure that budgets don't override the estimated cost.

Time Management

One of the biggest challenges for a manager or team leader is to bring people together for goal accomplishment, as everyone works at their own pace. The responsibility of project managers is to set realistic deadlines and precise interaction with the team regarding the deadline. A potential manager does know when to transform resources when specific tasks are at risk.

Monitor Project Progress

The initial project outline created by the project managers offers the team a successful route, but it doesn't mean you won't face any hurdles. This is where we need a project manager. They look for corrective measures to ensure that the project is delivered on time and within the budget.

What are the Project Management Stages?

From the initial point to the final, every project undergoes 4 different stages that define the project lifecycle, and they are:

Initiation Stage

The initiation stage is the starting level of a project where individuals involved must have insight into objectives, scopes, risks, and project priorities.

Planning Stage

Here, the project programmes and needed resources are determined. Managers in this stage create an estimated deadline for completing the project.

Execution Stage

Proficient team members join together to transform the project plan into deliverables. During this stage, project managers monitor the progress on a routine basis.

Closure Stage

This is the final stage of the project lifecycle, where the team hands over the deliverables, analyze project performance and finally completes them.

What is Triple Constraint Theory in Project Management?

Triple Constraint theory is defined as the project's success that is impacted by its cost, scope and time. Any modification in any one factor will directly affect the rest. Let us understand it better with an example, shall we? If there are unexpected modifications in the project and your client wants the deliverable at a swift turnaround time, it will directly affect the processes. You must ramp up, maybe charge more and meet the altered deadlines.

As a project manager, you can maintain the concept by balancing these constraints via trade-offs and ensuring everyone's demands are met to create a successful project. Though the idea is a significant part of the project, it doesn't determine success, as projects are made from several functions. That is why few management professionals have added extra 3 constraints to the existing model to better reflect critical project areas.

• Quality - Whether a project is a final deliverable or a tangible product, each project has quality norms. Project managers need a specific quality management practice to control project quality.
• Risk - This is an inherent aspect of any project, and this is one of the reasons why project experts need to develop a risk management plan to define how the risks can be tackled.
• Benefit - Different gifts are obtained from a project; hence managers must ensure that project shareholders get the best financial help.

Why Triple Constraints in Project Management?

If you are more open to the Triple Constraints idea and start paying a little close attention, you can change the way your members react to the concept and to the rest of the project on the verge of completion. When you have a better insight into what to expect, it's a lot easier to complete the tasks.

Understanding the Scope

It's easy to get caught in scope creep; hence, communicating with the team about the project requirements is always better. If you don't go in detail and your team is not familiar with the different project aspects due to lack of communication, the team might likely go beyond what's expected of them as they believe something isn't a project part.

Set Suitable Deadlines

Whether the project is short-run or long-run, setting small targets and deadlines will assist your team to function seamlessly and give them satisfaction as they go past each objective. Observe these deadlines and targets to maintain a progress track and calculate the planned timeline vs the actual one for target completion. This will help in effective accountability and offers progress clarity.

Know the Budget

When you provide the budget to your client, you will be highlighting every detail of expenses, which will help you keep track of the budget. You have to ensure that the team is aware of the budget and how you are doing about it, so you can find where to adjust the cost to make sure you are sticking near to the original expense.

How Triple Constraints Work in a Project?

Project managers can either maximize or minimize the cost, scope and timeline of a project with trade-offs to keep it on schedule and under budget. Let us see how these works:

• Time and scope - If you are running behind the schedule, you can reduce the project scope and time. In reverse case, you can maximize the project duration if shareholders come up with additional project schemes.
• Cost and scope - By minimizing the scope of a project, you can perform fewer practices, which leads to lower expenses. In other case, a massive scope means higher expense.
• Cost and time - In some projects, cost and time are directly dependent such as the cost of renting equipment or labor.

In all these cases, we can see the application of the Triple Constraints for project management; however, several other trade-offs can happen during a project, such as benefit, quality and risk.

With the help of a project management dashboard, a manager can keep a close watch on the progressing project. Metrics like scope, schedule and expenses are easy to keep sight of. A project manager can determine problems and adjust the Triple Constraints to prevent them from developing more significant issues.

The project manager features a real-time dashboard that indicates all crucial data of a project impacting the Triple Constraints.

What are Different Project Management Methods?

In this article, you came across the 4 different project stages. Now, executing these stages is totally up to you and your team. And over the year, these management experts have come up with trial methods that make it easier. 3 popular project management methodologies are:

Lean Project Management

It is a repetitive method that aims at the minimization of waste. This method strives to minimize three kinds of waste: unevenly distributed workloads, unwanted activities, and overburdened team members.

Agile Project Management

This method also follows a repetitive practice, where each project stage is time-boxed, and the entire project aspects are iteratively delivered. Agile project management methodology works for projects where you want to experience swift success and can be built over iterations.

Waterfall Project Management

This follows a linear method to project management for collecting detailed requirements, creating plans, developing solutions, testing, and delivery. The waterfall methodology works excellent when the conditions are accurate and precise.

Is a Career in Project Management Worth It?

The increasing demand for project management in a company means that it's an excellent choice for the enthusiast who wants to be a part of a critical project management role to achieve business objectives.

As a project manager, you can make a real impact on aiding companies to hit their goals and develop a working environment where teams can flourish.

But what is the real reason for choosing a project management career?

If you are that person who loves to manage projects and can excel in working with several shareholders across different teams, then this is for you.

Project managers are business superiors, helping transform intangible values and objectives into a solid outcome. Be it on the construction or software development side, these managers have a great choice to make their mark on the venture and enhance how the task gets done.

If you want to make a huge difference to teams, then project managers are always looking for new-flanged technology and methodologies that can assist teams to work closely more efficiently and productively.

What Are Project Management Certifications?

There are several project management certifications that you could consider, from the PMI or otherwise, and popular among the certifications are:

Project Management Professional (PMP)

The Project Management Professional (PMP) is a globally-renowned project management certification accredited by Project Management Institute (PMI), that indicates the experience, education, skill and competency needed to direct and lead projects.

With predictive, agile and hybrid methods, the certification proves project leadership experience, high-gearing careers for project leaders across different industry verticals and assisting companies in hiring individuals to work smarter and better.

Scrum Certifications

It is a project management scheme that signifies iteration and adaptability and is an Agile methodology. Becoming a Scrum Master means you will be assisting projects to suit the scrum practise for better outcomes. Popular certifications include CSM and PSM.

Agile Certifications

Agile is a project management approach that targets adaptability and swiftness through small-scale and seamless delivery. The popularity of these practices has been witnessed in recent years. Popular Agile certifications are PMI-ACP and SAFe certification.

Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM)

The Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM) is an accreditation offered by the Project Management Institute (PMI) for individuals entering the project management profession or those seeking to obtain the fundamentals of project management knowledge.

The certification will help them to work well in a project environment and acknowledge challenges in a more organized manner. 

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