1. With the huge advance in technology in past two decades, people all over the world owning small scale businesses as well as people working for industries and international companies manage projects to reach a variety of goals that benefit their businesses and companies or simply solve any issues. Not just the top level management systems, every single department of every enterprise uses manage projects today. Thus, there is a new or renewed interest in the field of project management.
2. A project is a temporary, accumulative process of reaching one or more specific goals with the use of available skills, knowledge, tools and resources.
Its main attributes are its unique purpose, transience, progressive elaboration, various resources, sponsorship and uncertainty.
Projects end when they meet their goal specifications but what people do in their day to day jobs needs to be done every day for running their organization successfully.
The success of projects depend on three key factors, its scope, time and cost goals. These constraints are referred to as the triple constraints.
3. Project management is the process of applying all the available tools, resources, skills and knowledge to reach a project’s goals in the designated time.
Project Management framework comprises all the factors that are necessary to facilitate the entire process to meet all the needs and expectations of everyone affected or influenced by the project.
Project Stakeholders: Anyone who is directly or indirectly affected by the project is a project stakeholder. Examples include the project leader, project team members, project sponsors, targeted customers, etc.
Knowledge areas: Knowledge areas are different kinds of managements that a project manager must complete for the project to be successful. These include nine major areas, integration management (example, detailed evaluation of the project) , scope management (example, defining and managing each and every project activity), time management (example, devising project schedules), cost management (example, estimating budgets), quality management (example, making sure the project satisfies all needs) , human resources management (example, devising work schedules for the project members), communications management (example, monitoring the flow of information among different areas of the project), risk management (example, evaluating risks and potential dangers related to the project) and procurement management (example, procuring goods, products and services from outside sources for the project).
Tools and techniques: These are specifically designed tools and representations that help the project managers to master all the knowledge areas. Examples include Gantt charts, project networks diagrams, critical path analysis, etc.
Project success factors: These are the key factors that determine if a project was a success or not. These factors are as follows:
a) The project met scope, time and cost goals, example, a manufacturing project successfully manufactured the desired number of quality products within a specific period of time or earlier and within a specific devised budget or less.
b) The project gained customer/sponsor satisfaction, example, the products manufactured by the project, were liked by the customers in the marketplace and the sales were outstanding.
c) The results of the project accomplished a goal, example, the outstanding sales of the manufactured products profited the company.
4. A program is a collection of two or more correlated projects that are to be managed as a collective unit.
A project portfolio is a strategic analysis of a program or several projects to help the related organization in sequential decision making.
A group of correlated projects are managed efficiently and effectively in a collective unit, with a concise and consistent collaboration. This group is called a program. While the projects have their own specific set of goals to accomplish with