Project Management for Everyone

As long as there has been the need to get someone done there has been the need for project management. The Egyptians may not have been the first to use project skills to build the pyramids, but they did follow very organized project plans. The great pyramid at Giza was a monumental structure for it time, 2550 B.C.E (Kozah-Holland, May 2013) for the modern world project management formally came together in the 1950s. The surprising aspect of this is that most people today are not familiar with all the variations that project management had to go thought before it became the process that we know today. While most people feel that project management is only good for running a business but in fact it can be applied to everyone’s everyday life. In order to understand more about project management you need to understand that it consists of a start, middle and an end that needs to be completed on time, and on budget (Azzopardi Oct 2006). Project management process involves five steps: Initiating is the process where the project is established including the scope, who the parties and the end results. Planning defines the steps in the process, and finding out what actions to take to make it work. Executing are the steps that are carried out per the steps created in the plan. Monitoring is one of the most important steps because anything can happen that can cause your project to fall into scope creep. This could cause you to be over budget or take more time than expected. It all goes well you will be able to close the project on time (PMI 2000 August 2005). Closing involves reviewing all the steps in the project management process. Once a project is complete there are many points along the way that need to be discussed. “Lessons Learned” a meeting that allows the entire team to go over each process step which can include good and bad. Once complete these points can be used future projects.
When project fail to closes on time or are over budget it could be caused by poor communication skills of the project manager. This could be from their inability to explain their expectation to the team which allow them to start thinking on their own which can lead to project silos. To help with this it is important to have a detailed roadmap of the project to ensure successful outcome.
A detailed roadmap starts with a Charter that will help define what