A business cannot function effectively without project management consultants, which is an essential part of every organization. It is essential for you to understand the fundamental of project management, whether you are working on a project for your company or a client.
What is Project Management?
Project management is essential component for completing projects effectively and on time. It is a multi-stage process that requires continued application of expertise, technology, skills of the project manager, and coordination between different stakeholders in order to complete a project and achieve its objectives.
The fundamentals of project management involve every process that takes the project from start to finish, thus ensuring its success. Below are the 7 project management fundamentals you need to know to form the foundation of every project.
1. Process Groups
There are five process groups or phases that make up the project management life cycle. Each group in the project management process focuses on a particular phase.
Initiation
The goal of initiation phase is to assist you in defining the project and turning it from an idea into an achievable objective that your stakeholders can review and approve. It starts with a Project Initiation Document (PID), which outlines information such as the business case, project scope, deliverables, objectives, estimated budget, constraints, goals, and anticipated timeline.
Planning
In the planning stage, you would detail your project’s infrastructure and help your team understand the project’s goals. During this phase, you’ll develop several project control elements that will help you have a clear picture of the steps that are required to follow for any project’s success.
Execution
The execution phase is where your project team will produce deliverables, put your project plan into action, and reach your goals. You will be required to manage your teams, maintain communication and collaboration between stakeholders, as well as organize milestones to make your plan a success and stay on schedule.
Monitoring
In the monitoring phase you will be required to keep an eye on the project progress and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), so you can correct issues as in when they arise. KPIs need to be monitored at the progress at every step, track it, and be vigilant about reporting.
Closure
The closure phase begins when the project is complete. During this time, you may need to review the project, run a final budget check, and create a comprehensive report covers all tasks that have been completed and those that need to be done during this time
2. Cost Management
Without effective cost management, it will be difficult to complete the project within budget. It is possible that if your project runs over budget, it may not turn out 100% successful, regardless of whether you bring the vision to life.
3. Risk Management
Risk management is one of the most critical project management fundamentals, and it’s all about understanding risks so that you can ensure a proper response. A project manager needs to be aware of the unpredictable nature of risk and how to respond to it quickly and cautiously.
Some of the steps for effective risk management may include:
- Recognizing and evaluating potential risks
- Assigning responsibility for these risks to appropriate team members
- Ranking each project risk according to its severity and likelihood of happening
- Preparing responses for each risk and taking appropriate action
- Tracking the effectiveness of your risk management plan and making necessary adjustments
4. Task Management
Every project consists of tasks that your team must complete to be successful. This means that task management is a critical component of project management. It involves identifying, monitoring, and planning the daily tasks.
5. Constraints
Every project has constraints, the most common of which are cost, time, and scope.
- Cost: Here, you must manage the project’s budget to stay within the allotted financial resource limits.
- Time: Managing this type of constraint requires planning, monitoring, and controlling the project schedule.
- Scope: The scope constraint requires you to define a clear project scope at the beginning of the project, create a process for any scope changes, and regularly communicate the scope to stakeholders.
6. Communication Management
Having poor communication among team members can lead to the failure of any project, which is why project communication management is important. Communication management allows you to ensure that everything runs smoothly, preventing issues that may cause your project to be delayed. To effectively communicate with your teams about your projects, you must first establish a communication plan that will be used for each message.
7. Changes Management
Change management is a part of project management process, which comes in handy when the best-laid plans go wrong.
Change management aids in maintaining control when change strikes and find solutions to keep the project on schedule. In addition, it would also help you anticipate, react, and implement changes as the project develops.
Project management is a thriving industry. Project managers must be well-organized, proactive, diligent, and strategic. Project management can achieve the desired results with the best project management practices and fundamentals.
At Rahy Consulting we can provide your organization with professional project management consultation that will guide your team in applying these project management fundamentals in the smoothest manner. Even the most prestigious companies rely on our project management consultant’s when it comes to effective operations consulting services. We can discuss your organization’s specific circumstances and provide you tailored solutions, thus making your meetings easier, complete with action items, keywords, speakers, and decisions made.
