Project Management: The Nature and Scope

Project Management encompasses a set of core activities that help to achieve project goals and objectives. It includes planning, organizing, and managing different project arenas through which necessary results can be achieved. It looks into aspects such as scope, time and budget which restrict activities or which set the limits within which project management must be handled. The aim of project management is to achieve all engineering project goals and objectives, while keeping in mind the limits within which these must be achieved. The limitations that must be considered include scope, time and budget. It covers the following arenas as part of its scope. They are initialization, planning and development, project execution, project monitoring and finally project closing. There are many different approaches and these include traditional approach, critical chain, extreme, and event chain methodology. The project manager must be able to effectively communicate requirements, handle the decision-making process with respect to project scope and goals, manage employee activities, negotiate with other members of the team, build a good team and allocate resources according to requirements. As part of the management process, it should make use of tools that help them to organize tasks, track hours, create a centralized location from where everything can be taken and collaborate with partners. In order to keep the project on the right track it is essential to have project control mechanisms in place. The appropriate level of control must be implemented because too much of control can be really time consuming, while toll less of control can make the project go out of hand. A project's success is determined if or not the project was completed within the stipulated time period and within the set budget and if it has met customer requirements.