Basics of Project Management

The term 'Project Management' may sound quite daunting to people who are new to this field. Let's cover the basics.

What is a project?
Project is a set of activities that need to be undertaken to deliver an outcome within a certain timeframe.

What is management?
Management is a process of controlling, facilitating, governing and tracking those activities for a successful delivery.

Project manager is responsible for delivering project within agreed quality, scope, timeframe and cost. Project manager is also responsible for managing risks and issues arising throughout the project.

So, how is Project Management different to Project Leadership?

One of the key ingredients of project management has evolved over the past few decades. We have seen a shift from manual workers to knowledge workers.

• In the last century, project management was primarily about managing manual workers and their tasks to achieve an outcome. Low maturity of project management and workforce skills suited task-based project management.

• Today workforce is largly made up of knowledge workers. They are capable of problem solving, they think laterally and they get motivated by being involved rationale behind decisions that affect them. This type of workforce need to be led and not managed.

This shift makes project management primarily about leading people and managing expectations. We will explore various aspects of leadership throughout this blog.