Summary - Introduction to Project Management Topics

Let us quickly summarize what we learnt in the previous chapters about the basics of Project Management:

• The activities inside an organization are generally organized into groups, which fall into two categories: operations and projects.
• Operations usually consist of ongoing routine work, whereas a project has a goal to generate a unique product, service, or result in a fixed time frame i.e.,, it has a planned beginning and a planned end.
• Organizations launch projects for different reasons, such as to meet a business or legal requirement or to take on an opportunity offered by the market.
• A project, like anything else in an organization, needs to be managed.
• Project management is the application of knowledge and skills to project activities in order to meet the project objectives.
• It involves performing a set of processes that constitute nine knowledge areas of project management:
      o Communication management
      o Cost management
      o Human resource management
      o Integration management
      o Procurement management
      o Quality management
      o Risk management
      o Scope management and
      o Time management.
• Each process is part of a knowledge area and has a membership in one of the five process groups:
      o Initiating
      o Planning
      o Executing
      o Monitoring & controlling and
      o Closing.
• The process groups represent different stages of a project lifecycle.
• Each project has a set of individuals or organizations that it influences positively or negatively, and these individuals and organizations are accordingly called positive and negative stakeholders.
• Some of these stakeholders may influence the project. Therefore, you must identify all the project stakeholders, positive and negative.
• The different project stakeholders might have different and conflicting expectations, which you as the project manager need to analyze and manage.
• The project environment consists of elements such as organizational culture, organizational structure, enterprise environmental factors, and organizational process assets.
• The structure of the performing organization could be functional, projectized, or matrix.
• In a Functional Organization project managers don't have much authority whereas in a projectized organization, the project manager is king. And there is the matrix organization which can be a combination of either extremes.
• Some organizations have a composite structure, which is a hybrid of these three basic structures.
• A project can be standalone or part of a program, which is a collection of interrelated projects and possibly non-project work.
• A project can also be part of a portfolio, which is a collection of programs, projects, and other related work.


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