Definition of Terms

ProjectManagement Assignment 1:

What is a project?
What is management?
What is project management?
(your reflection/learning's on the first day of class)


When probability is not at 0.0%, it's too soon to quit! Effort is always the key to a great success. Starting this one, “Project management” is a subject being introduced to us to learn the art of organizing the elements of a project, to apply it to our upcoming projects and to avoid failure. Most of the cases, a project haven’t being properly organized results to failure. On the first or second day of class, we had already taken a quiz about the given question, where in it was a time pressured and to admit that after the lecture I had realized that partly of my answers was quite wrong. Sharing of ideas and experiences had been added to clarify the importance of the course subject, and hearing all of it, I could conclude that failure always accompany the time. Time is really crucial and must be considered. Deadline is always a deadline, that’s what my professor said through a joke, but taking it seriously he is typically right about that! And to stress out that pin pointing somebody instead of our selves have been usually done in several cases as a project fails. Now let’s start defining some terms, the project, management and even the project management itself.

So, what is a project?

-Project, a word that is so known to all individuals, not only for the working individuals but also for students like us. For working individuals, projects are given to generate several applications for the use of the company they were in. And for students like us, projects are given to apply the learning and test the capability of a student. Project is a task which is a temporary or has a given due that must be considered. Projects undergo in several steps. A project is consisting of several elements; these elements are those tasks that are needed to be accomplished inside a project. Within a time line, elements of a project are specified and are sorted together to manage the whole project. It is also said that a project is a set of interrelated tasks to be executed over a fixed period and within certain cost and other limitations. A project is an undertaking requiring concerted effort, undertaken by a student or group of students to apply, illustrate, or supplement classroom lessons.

-A project must be punctual (time is crucial for a project is temporary and has a definite end), must be passed in its deadline and must meet its requirements. As what I have learned in our first meeting and by reading the given soft copy of a book, a project is consist of some characteristics, it has mainly three (3) major characteristics and these are the; Temporary; Unique products, Services and Results; and finally it is a Progressive elaboration.

-Dealing with these characteristics, let me elaborate it one by one:

oTemporary – a project is said to be temporary because it has a specific due date. It has a definite beginning and an end. And projects must be punctual at any cost. A project is a temporary activity with a starting date, specific goals and conditions, defined responsibilities, a budget, a planning, a fixed end date and multiple parties involved. Therefore, a project has a limited time and the members involved in the said project must cooperate to comply and meet its requirements before the time surpass them.

oUnique products, Services and Results – relating this one on our technopreneurship one (1) last semester, where in we were oblige to make our proposals as our main project for the subject. As far as I could remember, we were ask to have a business proposal which are unique and could serve and render a good quality of service. This is a definite example of a project having this type of characteristics being stressed out. A project must be unique to ensure or certify its quality. It must have the capability of performing and rendering good service. And most of all, a project must have a good outcome or a satisfying result. The projects result must meet the certain demands and qualifications and it must be on time to show a good result.

oProgressive Elaboration – as what I had said earlier, a project is composed of elements and these elements are performed in steps. Once more a project is a set of related tasks which have a specific goal. A project is a progressive elaboration or in other words, it undergo in several steps of progression. A project is a set of interrelated tasks to be executed in steps to have its coordination. It is a characteristic of a project that has the concept of temporary and unique; to elaborate it more; it has the concept of temporary in a way that each steps of its progress has a definite beginning and an end. And the concept of being unique for each of its progress of steps must be unique, so that the project will be more competitive against any other projects of its kind.

-A project is done with several individuals in a group. Now, these projects may fail or succeed depending on the performance if the member within its group. The unity of each member and the eagerness to finish a certain project might be one of the basic keys to its success.

ProjectManagement Assignment 1: Now, what is a management?

-In our lesson, or what I had understand in their sharing’s: management is the organizing and maintenance of a specific thing or task. A manager is the one responsible for organizing or controlling other people to have an accomplishment or to make things or decisions for the efficiency of a desired goal.

-As what I had learned on the first meeting of class, we had clarified the great difference between a good leader and a good manager. Anyone could be a leader but not a manager, and a having a leader is much more effective than having a manager. Directors and managers who have the power and responsibility to make decisions. Manager is the one who controls the members, giving some orders that must be applied on a progression of a project or something. Before, I thought that leading and managing are two similar things, but then I had realized that they had a great difference especially when applied in managing a project. Directors and managers who have the power and responsibility to make decisions to manage (they had the authority to control things that any regular employee couldn't make). As mentioned in the sharing, a leader unlike a manager can lead his or her members in a proper way, not by instructing or dictating them what they should do, but instead being a good model for his team mates and showing them a bunch of efforts for them to have a motivation and start doing things to reach their goals. The ideal project manager does whatever it takes to ensure that the members of the software project team can do their work. This means working with management to ensure they provide the resources and support required as well as dealing with team issues that are negatively impacting a team's productivity. The project manager must possess a combination of skills including the ability to ask penetrating questions for further informations, and resolve some conflicts along with more systematic management skills. A team with a leader not a commander or a manager which leads them properly will surely have the success for doing their tasks.

-Also for the first meeting, I had learned that management comprises planning, organizing, directing, and controlling an organization (PODC). Management is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired their objectives effectively. The process of planning, leading, organizing and controlling people within a group in order to achieve goals.

oPlanning – planning is a part of managing; it is where the proponents or the manager plans the idea and concept of a task or project. This is where they randomly put several ideas for a proposal, which is why it is called a plan. Planning is an act of formulating a program for a definite course of action. Deciding what needs to happen in the future (today, next week, next month, next year, over the next 5 years, etc.) and generating plans for action.

oOrganizing – or simply the implementation of the random plans. Here, ideas from planning are being arranged and “organized” to have a lead of the desired goal. In organizing, we must also consider some factors such as resources. We must also consider resources such as tools or money for the progress of the project or in short making optimum use of the resources required to enable the successful carrying out of plans.

oDirecting – is having a command with authority. Determining what needs to be done in a situation and getting people to do it. Having the authority to conduct or rather to give several instructions. Having a part of leading and conducting. To immediately finish a work, the manager must direct his own followers or members to make it stable.

oControl – another part of managing which only managers can apply, for leaders could not put a control over his members because of the authorization matters. Controlling was being associated to leading, but in further studies both of them have different meanings depending on how they were applied as what I had explained earlier. Controlling is also concern in checking the progress against the plans.

-To manage is to be in charge to secure all tasks and things; managing something is not as easy as it looks for it takes to be allotted a huge time to master it, but being a leader only needs skills to pursue. Effective utilization and coordination of resources such as capital, plant, materials, and labor to achieve defined objectives with maximum efficiency. I think I had already sited the differences between a manager and a leader, so far that’s a part of what I had learned that day.

-For example: in a company or let’s put a bank as the center of our example, in a bank there is a manager who manages all the transactions, it is him or her who controls all the transactions and is the center of the decision making beside the owner. He or she is the one who directs the business.

And finally what is a Project Management?

-Project Management has been described in the book as the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements. Now think about this, having a big project without any project management, can someone guess the sure result? Yes! Probably it would result in failing; it is somewhat like cooking a viand without even planning what goes first and what goes next. Imagine that you are making a project without having any organization of the stuffs or rather the elements that must be done; it would surely result in a total disaster for you will not know when you’ll be having a critical times. They say that project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, securing and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives to meet their common requirements.

-Several applications may be used to serve as the medium in performing a project management, these applications caters several fields to help in planning a project. These applications have time-lines that have its beginning period or the start and the due date or the end. These applications can also define the critical parts, and could also help the user guide his or her way to finish the project in the said time.

-At the first meeting I was also introduced to the three important details that could affect a project, it was also known as the triple constraint which forms like a triangle of important details that must be needed to consider inside a project management. The triple constraint involves the project Scope, Time, and Cost. These three must be balance for the quality of the project. A project must be within its budget, and must consider the time which is known as a temporary. The proponents must plan the scope of their desire project to define or know the specific project requirements. The project scope is the definition of what the project is supposed to accomplish, its goals and requirements, and the budget of time and money that has been created to achieve these objectives. It is absolutely unavoidable that any change to the scope of the project have a matching change in budget, either time or resources. It is unavoidable to leave the resources and time exactly the same as the older planned limitations as the scope changes, for the reason that when a projects scope changes, it is expected that it involves the evolution of it or rather widening its scope which deals more time and budget. A project must not surpass its limited budget and most of all, must not surpass the given time. In short it must be punctual and in budget. All these elements are interrelated. Each must be managed effectively. All must be managed together if the project, and the project manager, and the project proponents are aiming a good success.

-And also, managing a project includes: identifying the requirements; establishing clear and achievable objectives; balancing the competing demands for quality, scope, time, and cost; and adapting the specifications, plans and approach to the different concerns and expectations of various stake holders. In a project, identifying its requirements is basically an important thing to do; the proponents must know its requirements for its quality and service purposes. As mentioned earlier, the triple constraint could merely affect the quality of a project, its time, budget of cost and the scope of the project must be considered to reach the projects objective and goals. And most of all in managing a project, planning the sequence of the project elements is a must, to avoid heavy duties and lessen the critical times. Planning and knowing the further solutions that must be needed to apply in the coming challenges or problems inside the said project.

-The term project management is sometimes used to describe something, such as an organizational or managerial approach to the management of projects. And indeed having project management is a real big thing with a real big help in establishing a good quality project.

-Project management as what they had said is carefully planned and organized, and had putted an full effort to accomplish a specific and usually one-time objective, for example, construct a building or implementing a major new computer system (where in making a system needs to have a proper managerial or project management, the whole project must be broken to several elements to avoid errors or conflicts or anything). Project management includes developing a project plan, which includes defining and confirming the project goals and some of its main objectives, its targets, identifying each tasks and how the goals of the project will be achieved, and determining budgets and time-lines for completion. And by the way, in planning a task, it is not always about doing things one at a time, sometimes having two or more things can also be considered depending on the availability of a worker or the toughness or difficulty of a given task, and also depending on the tasks pre-requisites of the said common elements within a project.

An abbreviation was also included in our lecture, it was the S.M.A.R.T. which literally means Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Reliable, and Time bounded. Five basic keys needed to be considered for the great progress of projects. Most of these basic keys are already discussed above except the part of being reliable. I wonder why I had missed this one important thing, but anyway back to business; reliable, a project must be reliable especially when we are talking about a project consisting of a system. The outcome of the project must be reliable and could handle or produce a good quality performance for several users will surely rely on it.

As I go for a deep research (with a little help from a source for the copy of the file) about the project management as a whole, we had found a file which is an interesting one, which states the Law of project management. These are:

oProjects progress quickly until they are 90% complete. then they remain at 90% complete forever – as what I had understand, it means that a project similarly takes steps of procedures and progress as time passes, that is why we couldn’t get a 100% project completion because of the several changing demands as the technology evolves.

oWhen things are going well, something will go wrong. When things just can't get worse, they will. When things appear to be going better, you have overlooked something – expect the unexpected, that’s the term they usually connect on these situations, which basically means never let your guard down, possibilities do come even in the smallest percentage of it. A project needs effort, and you’ll never avoid challenges to come in any projects.

oIf project content is allowed to change freely, the rate of change will exceed the rate of progress – lots of changes but still not conquering the main objective of the project, before any changes we must first consider our project objectives, the aims and goals of the project.

oProject teams detest progress reporting because it manifests their lack of progress

For now, I think that’s all what I have learned on our first meeting and on my own researching. The importance of having a project management, the difference between a leader and a manager, the basic keys and elements that must be consider to have a good, satisfying and high quality result of a project, the main characteristics of a project, the things that managing is involved into and etc.. That’s all for this topic and always remember “Only those who endure defeat become stronger. The most elite are those who stand right back up and keep working. The average ones hesitate a moment, and take longer to rise. And the losers are content to stay flat on their backs.” Always put a 100% effort on the things you do and never plan or aim of failing