Project management and its different approaches

Posted by AmandaTom on September 12th, 2013

The discipline of motivating, planning, organizing and controlling a business’s resources in order to accomplish certain goals is known under the name of project management. Although there are numerous people who deal with managing organizations or businesses, a project management certification is recommended in case you want to be taken more seriously.

Business projects are temporary endeavors that have a well-defined beginning and also a defined ending. These are usually constrained by deliverables, by time or by funding. It is assumed from the beginning that these projects can meet objectives and goals that in the end can bring an added value or a beneficial change to a specific business. Because of the fact that projects are only temporary, they are different than business operations that are semi-permanent, permanent or repetitive in producing services or products. This is why project management is different than general business management and has to be done by someone who has a form of project management certification. Usually, managing a certain business project requires good management strategies and a high level of technical skills that can be developed by only getting a certification.

Project management poses different challenges. The primary one is represented by achieving all of the goals that a certain project has. At the same time, its objectives have to be reached, but its preconceived constraints must be honored as well. These constraints are represented by budget, scope, quality and time. Another challenge is represented by optimizing the necessary inputs allocation and by integrating them so that they can meet all of the pre-defined objectives. As these challenges are more ambitious than regular business management problems, they require to be handled by someone with a project management certification.

As far as project management approaches are concerned, you should know that these vary, including phased, lean, incremental and iterative approaches. However, regardless of the employed methodology, a close consideration must be awarded to all project objectives, its costs and its timeline. In addition, the responsibilities and the roles of the stakeholders and of the project participants must also be carefully considered.

One of the most used approaches by those with a project management certification is the traditional approach. This identifies a series of steps which have to be followed in an exact order so that the approach to have the desired, positive result. There are no less than five development components of which four are regular phases and one is a control step. These are represented by initiation which must be followed by planning and designing. The third step is executing and constructing, and the fourth step is represented by monitoring and then by controlling systems. Finally, the last phase is the one of completion. However, a very interesting observation is that some projects can end before reaching the completion stage, while others can necessitate following different steps multiple times.

If you’re looking to be taken more seriously in your place of employment, and are interested in applying for a promotion to a project manager position you should get an internationally accredited project manager certification by enrolling in a class offered by a reputable online Project Management school, and find answers to all of your questions.