The Importance Of Project Management

This was an excellent course for me. The previously two project management courses gave me a good background of the fundamentals required and this built on the previous knowledge gained to give me a better understanding of the overall process involved in becoming a successful project manager. Project execution and planning are two critical steps that I feel impacted me the most during this course. Putting forth a lot of effort early will usually pay off in the end. One of the key concepts I learned about was the Earned Value Management System (EVMS). This is a project management technique for measuring project performance and progress. The EVMS gives a PM better control over project constraints such as scope, cost, and schedule. It helps

Earned Value Management helps you analyze the cost performance, schedule performance, cost variance and schedule variance. EVM improves planning processes and ties in time-based financial costs to the project tasks. It shows you the project’s progress and helps you in measuring the project’s finance and time performance. It improves communication and project visibility which helps prevent scope creep. EVMS can inform you if you are going away from any performance metrics such as scope, cost and schedule metrics. It helps you identify the potential risk areas. Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) are also very important. A work breakdown structure is a key project deliverable that organizes the team 's work into manageable sections. The WBS has numerous benefits to help in defining and organizing the project work. A project budget can be assigned to the top of the work breakdown structure, and section budgets can be calculated based on each project 's work breakdown structure. By assigning time and financial estimates

A little bit of psychology is needed to understand everyone’s different working styles and behaviors. Selecting your team members is about choosing skills and strengths of individuals and then matching them to various roles and responsibilities. Almost all behavioral models point to the ability of a PM to motivate their team towards a common goal. PM’s can reinforce positivity by building self-confidence and organizing team building exercises. Team building is an ongoing process. Expectations must be clearly defined and the project manager needs to hold the team members accountable in meeting the expectations of the project. The least that each team member must understand is to work together for common project objectives. There will definitely be working and behavioral conflicts, but a good PM will understand this and be able to navigate the team through these