The Concept of Project Management

Project means a planned activity requiring a set of non-routine tasks for completion in a time-limited effort. To complete a project we need to plan, organize, direct and control the resources of the organization for a relatively short-term objective that has been established to complete specific goals and objectives. Though it sounds similar to what we do in daily life, the major difference between a project and what we do in our routine life is that we don’t need to make extra efforts for what we do in daily life. Similarly, a project signifies the completion of a set of complete planned activities, while in our daily life, we keep doing the things time and again.

There’s also a distinction between ‘projects’, ‘programs’, and ‘portfolios’. But this distinction is more in terms of logistics and expression. While a program is more often used to signify organizing events, a portfolio signifies the holdings of a company or an individual. In the software industry to the term ‘program’ implies a set of instructions coded to let the computer do a task. This task could also form part of a ‘project’. ‘Programs’ and ‘projects’ can be parts of a portfolio in general, with a number of programs within a portfolio and a number of projects in a program. ‘Project Portfolio Management’, involves the setting of priorities through an appropriate value optimization process (Reiling, 2008). To manage a project we need to do a set of independent and interdependent activities in order to:

• Complete the planned activities according to a stated schedule;
• Deliver the completed project or product on time;
• Manage the costs of the process to ensure attainment or reduction of budgetary projections;
• Monitor the results of the process to ensure that the purpose and benefits of the systems or project have been accomplished.