Many people and organizations today have a new or renewed interest in project management. In the past, project management primarily focused on providing schedule and resource data to top management in just a few industries, such as the military and construction industries. Today’s project management involves much more, and people in every industry and every country manage projects. New technologies have become a significant factor in many businesses, and the use of interdisciplinary and global work teams has radically changed the work environment. The facts below demonstrate the significance of project management in general:
In 2011, the average annual salary (excluding bonuses, in U.S. dollars) for someone in the project management profession
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Project management certification continues to be one of the most popular certifications throughout the world. The U.S. spends $2.3 trillion on projects every year, and the world as a whole spends nearly $10 trillion on projects of all kinds. Projects, therefore, account for about one fourth of the U.S. and the world’s gross domestic product (GDP). Project management is also a vital skill for personal success. Managing a family budget, planning a wedding, remodeling a house, completing a college degree, and many other personal projects can benefit from good project management (Project Management Institute 2012). In addition to project management, healthcare organizations are embracing program and portfolio management to address enterprise-level needs. This chapter introduces projects and project management, summarizes the context of healthcare project management, describes the differences between project, program, and portfolio management, discusses the role of the project, program, and portfolio manager, and provides important background information on these growing professions (Standish Group 1995). To discuss project management, it is important to understand the concept of a project. A project is “a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.” Operations, on the other hand, is work done in organizations to sustain the business. Projects are different from operations in that they end when their objectives have been reached or the project has been
Gray, C., Larson, E. (2008). Project Management: The managerial Process. New York, NY: The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.
‘Project Managers occupy a central role in driving successful completion of projects. Project Management is a thriving professional discipline much in demand throughout the world.
Project management is "the art and science of converting vision into reality" (Atkinson, 1999). Project management delivers results. Project managers enjoy the challenge of juggling multiple responsibilities and optimizing workflow in a highly competitive environment. From managing the development of a website to launching new company wide integration system, project managers keep projects on time, on track and within budget. Strong business, management and organizational skills as well as experience with current technologies put qualified candidates in high demand in this extraordinary career field. The practice of project management focuses efforts on your mission by defining priorities, utilizing resources, and producing outstanding goods and services for businesses and customers alike. A successful project translates a broad public mission into concrete results and outcomes.
Kerzner, 2013 defines project management as “The planning, organising, directing, and controlling of company resources for a relatively short-term objective that has been established to complete specific goals and objectives. In this report, I will discuss risks, deliverance and management of a real-life project and the decisions and actions of project managers and stakeholders.
This paper will examine three websites that I found to provide interesting information on one of the following topics: project management, project management careers, project portfolio management, and IT project management; as well as the Project Management Institute’s Web site. The four websites that will be examined are: CIO – Project Management Definition and Solutions, Project Management Certification, and Wisconsin School of Business – Project Portfolio Management.
Jugdev, K. (2012). Learning from Lessons Learned: Project Management Research Program. American Journal of Economics and Business Administration , 4(1), 13-22.
Harvard Business Review Press (2012). HBR Guide to Project Management. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. P123-124
Meredith, J. M. (2009). Project Management A Managerial Approach. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Patanakul, P., & Milosevic, D. Z. (2010). They are business leaders at Spotlight Corporation. In D. Z. Milosevic, P. Patanakul, & S. Srivannaboon, (Eds.), Case studies in project, program, and organizational project management (pp.409-416), Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley &
Heagney, J. (2012). Fundamentals of project management (4th ed.). New York, NY: American Management Association
“Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to organisational and project activities to achieve the aims of an organisation through projects” (PMI, 2003).
This ranges from the provision of services such as event planning to the production of goods in the manufacturing, real estate development and the extractive industries. Until recently, project management was not taught in schools in Ghana. Rather, technocrats who were thrust into managing projects had to learn from their experiences or through working with project management professionals. With the growing shift towards projects, project management is now being taught in universities as well as by several institutions. The proliferation of announcements of “PMP” i.e. Project Management Professional courses in newspapers, suggests that a demand has been created. This augurs well for ensuring that projects are managed by professionals. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence to show that the acquisition of technical knowledge and project management skills by non-professionals who may be in the very senior management positions have been created as a direct result of the proliferation of institutions offering Project Management
In the globalized economy, Successful project managers are in much demand across many industries. Organizations strongly need experienced project managers to lead their staff to accomplish their business goals and deliver successful projects. In an increasingly complex environment, project managers need to turn into many roles and have all kinds of responsibilities at each level of management within an organization. Good project managers are not born. They need to be trained. They develop their skills through study, practise and experience. They become better project managers after they finish a successful project each time. They learn new techniques and apply them on their projects. They learn their lessons from failed projects and then improve to be better project managers in the future.
When planning a new project, how the project will be managed is one of the most important factors. The importance of a managers will determine the success of the project. The success of the project will be determined by how well it is managed. Project management is referred to as the discipline that entails the processes of carefully planning, organizing, controlling, and motivating the organization resources so as to foster and facilitate the achievement of specific established and desired goals and meet the specific criteria of success required in the organization (Larson, 2014). Over the course of this paper I will be discussing and analyzing the importance of project management.
Over the course of my professional life, I have become increasingly involved in project management roles. Doing so has made me aware of the many varied challenges that can face projects and the project managers who are charged with bringing them through to completion. The success or failure of projects, in whatever economic, political or social field, rests not just on the quality of the project’s goals, but also on the abilities of those involved in the project – and above all those who are managing it – to bring it to successful completion. To do this, project managers need to be equipped with a very wide range of skills, many of which are unrelated to the type of project itself. So, for example, a project manager of an engineering project must not only have engineering