Project Management Essay
Why study project management? This essay gives an answer to the question. It explains the importance and benefits of planning as a business process and a research topic. Write an A+ essay on product management with this example!
Introduction
Project management phases.
- Strategic Management
Project management is a discipline of planning, controlling, securing and organizing resources to attain specific objectives. A project can be perceived as an impermanent endeavour with a defined starting and end, undertaken to convene unique objectives and goals, normally to bring about useful change.
The impermanent nature of projects differs from business to business. In some cases it can be permanent, or semi permanent, repetitive functional actions to produce services or products. “A project is a unique endeavour to produce a set of deliverables within clearly specified time, cost and quality constraints” (Westland 2).
All projects can be thought of as a series of phases that have specific beginnings and defined endpoints. Project management life cycle has mostly four phases namely project initiation, project planning, project execution and project closure. All of the phases of the project life cycle have lot of activities to play. These are described in the following segment.
Project Initiation:
This is the initial phase of the project life cycle, which, in turn, has a group of activities which are to be carried out prior to the planning stage. In this phase, the scope and purpose for initiating it and the solution to be found are described.
Project Planning:
In the project planning step, all the project management planning tasks, which are required to complete the project on time and within budget are explained.
Project Execution:
The next phase of project life cycle is project execution. In this phase, the physical deliverables are presented for the consumer. It is the most significant phase in the project life cycle and it utilizes a set of energy and resources.
Project Closure:
Project closure is the final phase of the project life cycle, which properly concludes the project and reports the whole achievement in terms of pre-defined objectives.
The job of the Project Manager is to prepare, execute and decide projects according to the given parameters and within financial plan. This includes obtaining resources and managing the plans of group and third-party consultants so as to distribute projects according to the plan.
The Project Manager will also describe the project’s aim and manage quality control all through its life cycle. McGraw-Hill and Irwin, in their book, “Project Management: The Managerial Process,” claim that “Project Management strikes a balance between the technical and human aspects of managing projects. It is suitable for a course in project management and for professionals who seek a project management handbook” (Gray & Larson).
The Role of Strategic Management in a Project
Strategic Management method contains the process of selecting, directing and calculating project outcomes to ensure best value for a business. Every project undertaken by a business has to meet certain criteria set up by the company’s management. This is intended to ensure alignment with the planned vision of the business.
The four important Strategic Management Processes are: ensure that every project is strategically associated, make a Project Management centred culture, apply Strategic Project Management best practices and to evolve a strategic project measurement scheme.
Project Scope Management, on the other hand, contains the procedures necessary to ensure that the project encompasses all the work required, but only the works necessary to complete the project effectively. Managing the project scope mainly concerns with controlling and defining what is and is not contained in the project.
Project management must be viewed as a technique that enables the organisations to successfully execute selected projects efficiently and effectively. However, the use of this technique alone does not automatically guarantee project achievement.
Gray, Clifford F. & Larson, Erik W. Project Management . McGraw-Hill Publishing Limited. 2000. Web.
Westland, Jason. The Project Management Life Cycle: A Complete Step-by-Step Methodology for Initiating, Planning, Executing & Closing a Project Successfully . Kogan Page Limited. 2006. Web.
Project Management Essay FAQ
- Why is project management important? Project management aims to plan and lead a project to successfully complete it. It involves several phases, each of which brings direction to a project, be it in the sphere of business, charity, or art.
- Why study project management? Project management is an exciting job that might lead to a fulfilling career in many spheres. Project management skills that imply the ability to successfully lead a project from its beginning to the conclusion, are always in demand in any company.
- What is scope in project management? Project scope means a common understanding between the project stakeholders about its boundaries, goals, and essential milestones. It is crucial to define the project scope and its key elements before you start working.
- What is crashing in project management? Crashing is a method in project management used to speed up the project’s timeline without changing its overall scope. Project crashing implies adding more resources to reach the highest possible efficiency level.
- Chicago (A-D)
- Chicago (N-B)
IvyPanda. (2023, October 30). Project Management Essay. https://ivypanda.com/essays/project-management-4/
"Project Management Essay." IvyPanda , 30 Oct. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/project-management-4/.
IvyPanda . (2023) 'Project Management Essay'. 30 October.
IvyPanda . 2023. "Project Management Essay." October 30, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/project-management-4/.
1. IvyPanda . "Project Management Essay." October 30, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/project-management-4/.
Bibliography
IvyPanda . "Project Management Essay." October 30, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/project-management-4/.
- Professional Endeavour in the Social Sciences: Medical IT System
- "The Good Temp" by Vicki Smith
- Asia's Authoritarianism and Its Stability Reasons
- Three Concepts of Hinduism Tradition
- "The House of Cards" by Jean Siméon Chardin
- How Does Buddhism Explain the Nature of Our Existence?
- Milton Friedman's Biography and Achievements
- Teaching Geography and Value-Based Education
- Changed Views of Happiness: Context and Aim of the Definition
- The Concept and Types of Project Closure
- Employee Turnover Ratio
- Organization Behavior
- Business Value of Wireless Technology in Chemicals and Automotive Industry
- Team Work in Management
- Duties of a Professional Consultant
Project management: Recent developments and research opportunities
- Published: 16 June 2012
- Volume 21 , pages 129–143, ( 2012 )
Cite this article
- Nicholas G. Hall 1
4250 Accesses
45 Citations
Explore all metrics
This paper studies the business process known as project management. This process has exhibited a remarkable growth in business interest over the last 15 years, as demonstrated by a 1000% increase in membership in the Project Management Institute since 1996. This growth is largely attributable to the emergence of many new diverse business applications that can be successfully managed as projects. The new applications for project management include IT implementations, research and development, new product and service development, corporate change management, and software development. The characteristics of modern projects are typically very different from those of traditional projects such as construction and engineering, which necessitates the development of new project management techniques. We discuss these recent practical developments. The history of project management methodology is reviewed, from CPM and PERT to the influential modern directions of critical chain project management and agile methods. We identify one important application area for future methodological change as new product and service development. A list of specific research topics within project management is discussed. The conclusions suggest the existence of significant research opportunities within project management.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this article
Price includes VAT (Russian Federation)
Instant access to the full article PDF.
Rent this article via DeepDyve
Institutional subscriptions
Similar content being viewed by others
Open Source vs Proprietary Project Management Tools
Closing Thoughts
Further Research Opportunities in Project Management
agilemanifesto.org. (2001). Manifesto for Agile Software Development. Available via DIALOG. http://agilemanifesto.org/
Amram, M. & Kulatilaka, N. (1999). Real Options: Managing Strategic Investment in an Uncertain World. Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA
Google Scholar
Aumann, R. & Serrano, R. (2008). An economic index of riskiness. Journal of Political Economy, 116: 810–836
Article Google Scholar
Bertsimas, D. & Sim, M. (2004). The price of robustness. Operations Research, 52: 35–53
Article MathSciNet MATH Google Scholar
Brânzei, R., Ferrari, G., Fragnelli, V. & Tijs, S. (2002). Two approaches to the problem of sharing delay costs in joint projects. Annals of Operations Research, 109: 359–374
Brown, D.B. & Sim, M. (2009). Satisficing measures for analysis of risky positions. Management Science, 55: 71–84
Article MATH Google Scholar
Cai, X., Hall, N.G. & Zhang, F. (2012). Cooperation and contract design in project management. Working paper, Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Castro, J., Gómez, D. & Tejada, J. (2008). A polynomial rule for the problem of sharing delay costs in PERT networks. Computers & Operations Research, 35: 2376–2387
Cooper, R.G., Edgett, S.J. & Kleinschmidt, E.J. (2000). New problems, new solutions: making portfolio management more effective. Research-Technology Management, 43: 18–33
Corbett, C. & Muthulingam, S. (2007). Adoption of voluntary environmental standards: the role of signaling and intrinsic benets in the diffusion of the LEED green building standards. Working paper, Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA
Dickinson, M.W., Thornton, A.C. & Graves, S. (2001). Technology portfolio management: optimizing interdependent projects over multiple time periods. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 48: 518–527
Fox, G.E., Baker, N.R. & Bryant, L.J. (1984). Economic models for R&D project selection in the presence of project interactions. Management Science, 30: 890–902
Goh, J. & Hall, N.G. (2012). Total cost control in project management via satisficing. Working paper, revised for publication, Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
Goh, J. & Sim, M. (2010). Distributionally robust optimization and its tractable approximations. Operations Research, 58: 902–917
Goldratt, E.M. (1997). The Critical Chain. North River Press, Great Barrington, MA
Hall, N.G., Long, Z., Qi, J. & Sim, M. (2011). Managing underperformance risk in project portfolio selection. Working paper, Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
Huchzermeier, A. & Loch, C.H. (2001). Project management under risk: using the real options approach to evaluate exibility in R&D. Management Science, 47: 85–101
Hurwicz, L. (1972). On informationally decentralized systems. In: McGuire, C.B., Radner, R. (eds.), Decisions and Organization. North-Holland, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Kellerer, H., Pferschy, U. & Pisinger, D. (2004). Knapsack Problems. Springer, Berlin, Germany
MATH Google Scholar
Kerzner, H. (2009). Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling, 10 th edition. Wiley, Hoboken, NJ
Kim, Y.W. & Ballard, G. (2000). Is the earned-value method an enemy of work flow? Working paper, Department of Civil and Environmental Enginering, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
Klastorin, T.D. (2004). Project Management: Tools and Trade-Offs, 1 st edition. Wiley, Hoboken, NJ
Kotnour, T. (2000). Organizational learning practices in the project management environment. International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, 17: 393–406
Lukas, J.A. (2008). Earned value analysis — Why it doesn’t work. AACE International Transactions, EVM.01.1-EVM.01.10
Markowitz, H.M. (1959). Portfolio Selection: Efficient Diversification of Investments. Wiley, New York
Myerson, R. (1979). Incentive compatibility and the bargaining problem. Econometrica, 47: 61–73
MSDN Blogs. (2009). Architecture makes agile processes scalable. Available via DIALOG. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/nickmalik/archive/2009/05/19/architecture-makes-agile-processesscalable.aspx . Cited May 19, 2012
objectmentor.com. (2012). Agile/XP object mentor success stories. Available via DIALOG. http://www.objectmentor.com/omSolutions/agile_customers.html
Parkinson, C.N. (1955). Parkinson’s law. Economist, November 19
Parkinson, C.N. (1958). Parkinson’s Law: The Pursuit of Progress. John Murray, London, UK
Patrick, F.S. (1998). Critical chain scheduling and buffer management: getting out from between Parkinson’s rock and Murphy’s hard place. Available via DIALOG. http://www.focusedperformance.com
Peleg, B. & Sudhölter, P. (2003). Introduction to the Theory of Cooperative Games. Kluwer, Boston, MA
Book Google Scholar
Pich, M.T., Loch, C.H. & De Meyer, A. (2002). On uncertainty, ambiguity, and complexity in project management. Management Science, 48: 1008–1023
Project Management Institute. (2008). A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, 4th edition
Raz, T., Barnes, R. & Dvir, D. (2003). A critical look at critical chain project management. Project Management Journal, 36: 24–32
Roy, A.D. (1952). Safety-first and the holding of assets. Econometrica, 20: 431–449
Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. (2007). The urban environment. Available via DIALOG http://www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/cm70/7009/7009.pdf
Schindler, M. & Eppler, M.J. (2003). Harvesting project knowledge: a review of project learning methods and success factors. International Journal of Project Management, 21: 219–228
Schonberger, R.J. (1981). Why projects are always late: a rationale based on manual simulation of a PERT/CPM network. Interfaces, 11: 66–70
Smith, P.G. (2007). Flexible Product Development: Building Agility for Changing Markets. John Wiley, Hoboken, NJ
White, D. & Fortune, J. (2002). Current practice in project management: an empirical study. International Journal of Project Management, 20: 1–11
Wikipedia. (2011). Parkinson’s law. Available via DIALOG. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson’s_Law
Wikipedia. (2012). Earned value management. Available via DIALOG. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value_management
wwwF. (2010). Living planet report. Available via DIALOG. http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/all_publications/living_planet_report
Download references
Author information
Authors and affiliations.
Department of Management Sciences Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University, Ohio, USA
Nicholas G. Hall
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar
Corresponding author
Correspondence to Nicholas G. Hall .
Additional information
Nicholas G. Hall is Professor of Management Sciences in the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University. He holds B.A., M.A. degrees in economics from the University of Cambridge, a professional qualification in accounting, and a Ph.D. (1986) from the University of California at Berkeley. His main research interests are in tactical operations issues, especially project management, scheduling and pricing, public policy and sports management problems. He is the author of over 70 refereed publications, and has given over 260 academic presentations, including 88 invited presentations in 20 countries, 6 conference keynote presentations and 6 INFORMS tutorials. A 2008 citation study ranked him 13th among 1,376 scholars in the operations management field. He is a Fellow of the Institute for Decision Making under Uncertainty of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He won the Faculty Outstanding Research Award of the Fisher College of Business in 1998 and 2005.
Rights and permissions
Reprints and permissions
About this article
Hall, N.G. Project management: Recent developments and research opportunities. J. Syst. Sci. Syst. Eng. 21 , 129–143 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11518-012-5190-5
Download citation
Published : 16 June 2012
Issue Date : June 2012
DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11518-012-5190-5
Share this article
Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:
Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.
Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative
- Project management
- recent practical developments
- opportunities for research
- Find a journal
- Publish with us
- Track your research
Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.
To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser .
Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.
- We're Hiring!
- Help Center
PROJECT MANAGEMENT ESSAY
Related Papers
IET Software
Julian Bass
Nutrient Cycling in Agroecosystems
rasal kumar
The climatic conditions of North East India are favorable for trees to produce biomass in the form of foliage and twigs that are very rich in essential plant nutrients. Effective recycling of this biomass would help meet the nutritional requirement of crops. Field experiment was conducted in kharif (June–November) seasons for consecutive 3 years (2003, 2004, and 2005) at a lowland farm, subtropical Meghalaya (950 m asl), India, to study the effect of incorporating N-fixing tree biomass (leaves and twigs) on productivity and economics of rice (Oryza sativa L.). Fresh biomass from five tree species including erythrina (Erythrina indica), acacia (Acacia auriculiformis), alder (Alnus nepalensis), tree bean (Parkia roxburghii), and cassia (Cassia siamea) were applied at a rate of 10 t/ha. A plot with recommended NPK rate (80:60:40 kg/ha) and a control plot were also maintained for comparison. Among the tree species used, the biomass of E. indica was superior in terms of N (3.2%), P (0.47%), K (1.5%), and organic C (18.8%) contents. In the first and second year, productivity of rice was high with recommended NPK rate (4.82 t/ha in 2003 and 5.08 t/ha in 2004) followed by rice with incorporation of E. indica biomass. In the third year of the experiment, effects of tree biomass incorporation on growth, yield and yield attributes surpassed those of the recommended NPK rate, with the exception of A. nepalensis biomass. In that year, the maximum grain yield was recorded under E. indica treatments, exceeding yields under the recommended NPK rate and control by 10.5 and 69.3%, respectively. Incorporation of tree biomass significantly improved (14–19% N and 62–83% P over control) the stocks of soil available N and P. Treatment with A. auriculiformis and E. indica biomass resulted in significantly higher soil organic C content which exceeded that under the recommended NPK rate by 10.3 and 9.2% and that under the control by 15.2 and 14%, respectively higher by species. The highest net return was recorded with the recommended NPK rate ($ 381/ha) followed by E. indica ($ 303/ha). Since the local farmers are resource poor and rarely use chemical fertilizers, application of plant biomass, particularly that of E. indica, to lowland rice is a recommendable option to improve productivity and income, and to sustain soil health.
Paul Bannerman
Software development teams in large scale offshore enterprise development programmes are often under intense pressure to deliver high quality software within challenging time contraints. Project failures can attract adverse publicity and damage corporate reputations. Agile methods have been advocated to reduce project risks, improving both productivity and product quality. This article uses practitioner descriptions of agile method tailoring to explore large scale offshore enterprise development programmes with a focus on product owner role tailoring, where the product owner identifies and prioritises customer requirements. In glob-alised projects, the product owner must reconcile competing business interests, whilst generating and then prioritising large numbers of requirements for numerous development teams. The study comprises eight international companies, based in London, Bangalore and Delhi. Interviews with 46 practitioners were conducted between February 2010 and May 2012. Grounded theory was used to identify that product owners form into teams. The main contribution of this research is to describe the nine product owner team functions identified: groom, prioritiser, release master, technical architect, governor, communicator, traveller, intermediary and risk assessor. These product owner functions arbitrate between conflicting customer requirements, approve release schedules, disseminate architectural design decisions, provide technical governance and propogate information across teams. The functions identified in this research are mapped to a scrum of scrums process, and a taxonomy of the functions shows how focusing on either decision-making or information dissemination in each helps to tailor agile methods to large scale offshore enterprise development programmes. Keywords agile software development · scrum · large scale offshore enterprise development programmes · product owner · product owner teams · grounded theory.
2009 16th Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference
June Verner
2014 IEEE 9th International Conference on Global Software Engineering
International Journal of Information Engineering and Electronic Business
Prof. Dr. Rizwan Qureshi
First International Technology Management Conference
Andreas Tolk
Daniel R Greening
Our company manages 25 software engineering teams across 6 products using a single top-down Enterprise Scrum. We know of no other company doing this, yet it provides extreme visibility and control at the CXO level. It promotes agile thinking enterprise-wide, driving non-engineering departments to adopt Scrum. We believe it is making us more profitable. We estimate effort in team months, run quarterly Sprints, assign whole teams to projects, meet in weekly stand-ups. We start, postpone or cancel whole projects. Within individual projects, we still use 1-4 week Sprints and all the trappings of the classic Scrum process, including, in some cases, Scrum-of-Scrums. New challenges arise: Shared resource constraints suggest Kanban methods. Net Present Value can justify prioritization, but creates controversy. Moving teams between projects requires rapid programming environment setup. The process forces executives to justify decisions. We want simple improvement metrics, but they seem elusive.
RELATED TOPICS
- We're Hiring!
- Help Center
- Find new research papers in:
- Health Sciences
- Earth Sciences
- Cognitive Science
- Mathematics
- Computer Science
- Academia ©2024
IMAGES
VIDEO
COMMENTS
Past studies of project management practices have focused on PM tools and techniques and recognized the importance of strategic assets. Globalization, digital transformations, and hyper ...
Project management is a discipline of planning, controlling, securing and organizing resources to attain specific objectives. A project can be perceived as an impermanent endeavour with a defined starting and end, undertaken to convene unique objectives and goals, normally to bring about useful change. The impermanent nature of projects differs ...
• The exclusion of project management theories and methods including but not limited to agile management, • The exclusion of statistical analysis. 1.8 Definitions Project Management Effectiveness: The degree of which a specific set of requirements are achieved, or the ability to meet objectives (Wideman, 2002; Hyväri, Project management
The project management theory and standards offer a wide range of project management methods and tools. To ensure the maximum possible effectiveness of application of a particular methods or tools, it is necessary to assess suitability of their application within project life cycle stages, and also their suitability from the point of view of the type of the solved project.
Abstract. Project Management is used as a tool to discipline all resource involved in the project to achieve the goals of the project. The objective of this paper is to indicate how project management plays an importance role to make the project succeed. It also points out the risk and risk management, which is important for the project manager ...
Plan: Chapter 8 - Project Management . Chapter 8 . Program Management and Project Management . A project is a onetime operation. According to the APICS Dictionary, a project is "An ... The first written account that actually uses the term project management comes from "An Essay Upon Projects" written by Daniel Defoe in 1697. This essay ...
To increase that value and ensure strategic alignment across the project portfolio, executives at many global organizations are creating formal project management offices (PMOs). In State of the PMO 2010, 84 percent of the 291 project professionals responding said their companies have a PMO, demonstrating steady growth from 77 percent in 2006 and.
project management and agile methods. We identify one important application area for future methodological change as new product and service development. A list of specific research topics within project management is discussed. The conclusions suggest the existence of significant research opportunities within project management.
Project Management Journal® is the academic and research journal of the Project Management Institute and features state-of-the-art research, techniques, theories, and applications in project management. View full journal description. ... Awarded papers. 2023 Paper of the Year: Coping With Institutional Complexity and Voids; 2023 Most Cited ...
Management. Project management is the planning, organizing and managing of tasks and resources to accomplish a defined objective, usually with constraints on time and cost. Most projects, whether they are large and complex or small and simple, can be planned by breaking the project into small, easily manageable tasks, scheduling the tasks, and ...
Project Management - Simple Answers to Simple Questions Originally I wrote this for one of my clients in 1991. The idea was to develop a brochure to promote project management in one of the client's departments. Today, project management is well established in the organization, but the answers to the questions are just as valid. R. Max Wideman
Microsoft Word - ProjectManagementFinal. crashing are as under. a. Identify critical path and critical activity. b. Compute crash cost slope i.e. (Crash cost - Normal cost) / (Normal Time - Crash. Time) c. Select the activity with the least cost slope i.e. minimum crash cost per time.
project management speaker, consultant, and trainer with more than 25 years of industry experience. He holds an MS in mathematics and computer science from Emory University (1998) and a BS in computer science from Kennesaw State University (1987) and is currently a PhD candidate for a
Project Management Essay - Free download as PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read online for free. Scribd is the world's largest social reading and publishing site.
Kanwar U Tahir Khan. There are four main phases of project management: defining the project, designing the project process, delivering the project and developing the process. This Project Management Plan is concerned primarily with the first two steps:
PROJECT MANAGEMENT ESSAY MATTHEW DYSON Project management patterns form a source of valuable knowledge in which past experience is broken down into a series of situations and solutions, which can be easily searched and linked together to form a network of ideas through which managers can evaluate and assess the suitability of common approaches for implementation in their own situations.
Communication: The Message Is Clear December 2013 4 2013 Project Management Institute, Inc. CASESTUDY COMMUNICATION IN ACTION Organization: NorthWestern Energy, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, USA Industry: Utilities Lesson Learned: Communicating with citizen stakeholders increases public support despite costly and disruptive engagements. NorthWestern Energy was confident its US$350 million ...
PMP Sample Test Questions (correct answers are bolded) 1. An accepted deadline for a project approaches. However, the project manager realizes only 75% percent of the work has been completed. The project manager then issues a change request. What should the change request authorize?
1 Project Management Essay Project management is everywhere and anyone can be a project manager. It is not just a title that you have to apply for and is only applied within organizations. It could be creating a new ad campaign, gathering more research for future projects, or even just mowing a lawn. Project management and managers help by leading projects, being able to anticipate for change ...