ProjectManagement Assignment 4: How is a project different to any other work? Is Project Management relevant to me? cite examples.
Consider this one: Before you can effectively manage a project, you must first define and understand its projects’ nature (base on the lesson of making meaning, which would result to a good project) - its purposes, objectives, scopes, and budgeting. Some people would define the project as not existing until it has a sufficient definition, because it is impossible to start a project without the thorough examination about it.
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How could I differentiate a project from any forms of work when even I myself am puzzled from it? I was blinded by the word “update” which I usually hear when talking about projects, and the term which states that “there is no such thing as a perfect project or a 100% completion on projects for it involves continuous progress as time passes”. I was puzzled about these factors until I had a little reading and found a missing important part of it. A project is limited; I had disregarded the fact that a project has a bounded lifecycle which has a definite start and an end. Basing in this words, I was been enlightened, and had figured out that these factors are just components of it which means a project is composed of updates and maintenance to deliver its services properly. What I am saying is, a projects’ life ends upon its submission, but its service which needs updates and maintenance still goes on, for a project is not a continuous process but the service it caters is the constant one. That’s what I had concluded from that mind bugling phrases (I suppose) and am hoping I got it straight and right.
Let me elaborate more about these so called projects. 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.
Temporary – 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.
A continuous process is not a project. An ongoing task in considered as another form of work, for as I had stated earlier a project has a limited lifecycle. Most projects uses top-down cycle (started with a planning, analysis, design and implementation) this comprises updates after the project be presented to a test, and after all of this the cycle will never go backwards. Like any form of lifecycles, there is no turning backs but instead several changes may occur within it not unless you start on building another one. An example of a project is the creation of a certain system, which is upon completion, will be considered as a candidate for maintenance. Its subsequent updates and maintenance are no longer being considered as a project but still a part of it. In hands to this let me again stress out the “project end”. At the very end of certain projects, updates, maintenance and testing are considered to determine and ensure the services that certain project generates; to determine that the project had achieved and met all requirements, and to identify its weaknesses. Another example is all about chores, as we all know chores are done almost every day which I conclude that it would not be appropriate to call it a project, for it is ongoing or continuous if we based it from a lifetime process. But if we consider it as a task for a day, then we could say that it is a project for it will later come to an end (for the day). A project is composed of several objectives, a project could be divided to several tasks which they termed as project decomposition or breakdown and the proponents must works on each of the refined tasks in order to reach their goals and the goal of the project. The temporary nature of projects stands in contrast to business operations, which are repetitive, continuous, permanent or semi-permanent functional work to present their products and services. To make it more clear, projects are commonly different to businesses operations which needs a flow of development (which are considered as some of the other forms of work which contradicts the definition of project as a task). Projects are vulnerable to failures, if a team has failed to follow the decided run of the project time-line, then it would surely become a candidate for failing. The project’s success relies on the team itself and also the effectiveness of their project management. Thus, for it to succeed, a project must deliver to cost, to quality, and on time (which refers to the basic characteristics of a good quality project); and it must deliver the benefits presented in the business case, it must be productive, worthy or should we say cost effective.
The second question is “is project management relevant to me?”… Defining project management based on my learning, it is a key or tool used to have an organized project structure. To have a preliminary view or make certain of the projects outcome, a team should use some project management tools. Project management has been a useful tool in many operations, leading to better innovations that had change the world and had changed the people’s lives. Project management tools can make sure of the projects great foundation, for its quality and standard basis. We had already deal with these things couple of assignments ago, but to rest assure to explain its importance (or rather to be true, just for the word count! LOL) I had provided this terms. Project management is a carefully planned, analysis and organized effort to accomplish a successful and high quality projects. A project is a one-time effort that produces a specific result (or rather takes a limited time), for example, a building or a major new computer system. This is in contrast to generating a program because program as what I had research takes a continuous processes, also comprises with managing series of related multiple projects together, and as I had defined earlier, projects are not continuous thus programs are not projects. We had almost widen the meaning of project management, now how is this related to me? Simple, in our tasks especially on a student like me, project management is a helpful tool or method to organize things such as common school projects. For in a student’s life, there is no way of escaping a project not unless you have the plan of failing a certain subject because of specific projects to make. If you have been given a specific job to complete then you should consider using the principles of project management. This is one of the many things to apply the project management to my life. Let’s take it in another scenario or let’s have some literal examples; project management involves planning for the projects objective and goals, evolution of project through thorough analysis and updates to maximize a projects capabilities and budgeting a projects limited resources; at my certain age I could relate myself through this by simply basing on my lives processes as a whole, like project management, I am also oblige to plan several things for my future and to plan for the achievements of my goals in life; like project management who makes projects evolved to a well developed one, I also have my own evolutions, from being a child who wanders everywhere to a matured one and hopefully for a full maturity as the years surpasses. Evolution had started after I was blown out form my mothers’ womb! Like the first step of the project management, the planning for my life had started and generated there which has been leaded by my parents. And also, I had gone through several processes to gain some knowledge like as having a project through several processes to ensure its service via the tracking of project management. And one last thing! About the phase of budgeting within the project management method, for years I had been forced to budget my allowance to fit it in to my needs (isn't this a good sample of the relationship?).
Just bare in mind that those works with a continuous process could never be considered as projects, for projects has a planned due or is limited. If a task has a definite end, then we could call it as a project. And to assure the project development, must use a project management tool to have project more organized. To settle things within projects, there are lots of project management tools that can help you organize your project elements or tasks one good example of this is a Gantt chart, which is capable of giving the users tracking capabilities for them to be more oriented in the happenings inside their projects.
http://www.epmbook.com/projdefwhy.htm
http://www.spottydog.u-net.com/guides/faq/faq.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management
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