Question- What is project management?

Answer-

Nowadays, when all economies are growing and expanding at an exponential rate then project
management has become essential need of all businesses, industries, corporates to successfully
performing and achieving desired goals and expanding globally. In hard times, such a Covid
pandemic it became much harder or even impossible to manage, control and perform tasks/projects
remotely and the necessity of project management become more essential than ever. Still, being
such an important tool for success of a project or task, many people and industries are still unaware
or doesn’t understand project management completely and thinks it as a child’s play. They don’t
know the exact meaning and have clear understanding of the project management thus ignores its
importance until doesn’t face disaster in their business. With the hope that I will be able to explain a
little of it; today I decided to write this post on – “What is Project Management?”

In very simplistic and plain words, “Project management is an integrated approach to perform a
bunch of tasks taken by a project manager to achieve an objective.” This Integrated approach
requires certain skill sets to be demonstrated by a project manager are as follows but not limited to-

 collection of all available information that may be required or related to project and get it
documented properly and to ensure that same are being update time to time
 identification of required resources to perform tasks and bringing all available resources
together on a single platform and team formation
 setting and agreeing on a budget/cost and timeline to complete and deliver the task/project
 implementing, managing and controlling time, cost and resource schedule and keep track of
the same
 identification and managing all stakeholder involved as per their power and influence on the
project
 defining, establishing, publishing and managing communication methodologies and process
to be used on project, and working as a conduit for communication between all stakeholders
and soothe and resolve the issues arising between them time to time
 risk identification, finding the opportunities might be available but hidden, list out the
threats and manage those to it best and turn unfavourable conditions in favour of project
 ensure workflow or processes are running smoothly and resolve any disputes or hinderance
arising
 keeping track of all deliverables and issues arising time to time and solutions or actions
taken
 to ensure that required resources are available on right time and performing their tasks
satisfactorily
 ensuring health and wellness of team and acknowledging, appreciating and rewarding their
efforts time to time as per the performance given by them
 keeping tabs and ensure that quality checks and process are implemented and followed as
per the need of the project
 ensure that all the documents are being recorded and stored as per itinerary and can be
made available or presented as and when required
 to control and manage the changes on the project as required
 assist any internal or external audits
 facilitating meetings, workshops, trainings as and when required
  ensuring lessons learnt are recorded time to time and shared within the team or
stakeholders as required
 should be a team leader, effective communicator and a great decision maker and shall
demonstrate virtues as follows- flexible, adaptable, good listener, open to learn, act
spontaneous, confident, smart worker, understanding, analysing and problem solver,
trouble-shooter, logical and must be decisive
 taking feedback from the clients after project delivery and maintaining customer
relationships

Different projects can have different tasks and different methodologies or technologies or tools can
be used to complete these tasks such as agile/waterfall methodologies, project management tools-
Primavera, Microsoft Project or Jira, depending upon the type of project and its requirements. A
project might require one or all skill sets as explained above based upon the tasks required to
perform and achieve the objective of the project. Finally, I would say that project management is not
merely limited to achieve certain goals or results; it can have a wide range of outcomes and
expectations from a project manager depending upon the aspects of the project or task taken by a
project manager which require absolute planning, monitoring and control of activities at all stages of
the project.