Project Management in simple terms defined as to manage a project. It involves managing the resources, budget allocated for project, scheduling, and deliverables. Project Management involves phases to monitor, complete, deliver the project on schedule and within budget.
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What is a Project?
A Project is an activity that can be done over a period of time involving group of tasks, people, money and deliverables. In simple terms anything that involves time, money or people is a Project. Projects differentiated as small, medium and large scale projects. Depending on the nature Projects can be tiny or others are huge depending on complexity.
Projects size depends on what you need to deliver, how many resources are involved, how many people are impacted or how many people will benefit from the Project and people behind the project. What are the examples of Project are developing an application, creating a new workspace, bringing in a new machine, transporting material from one place to another etc.
What is a Budget?
A budget in Project Management is the sum of money you required to complete the project or forecast of expenses or costs. It includes all the costs you are planning to invest from beginning of project to end of the project. Budget includes everything from resourcing to licensing, consultancy fees, travel cost, training, up-gradation, contingency etc. All the cost part of the Project should be in the budget. A budget is basically a documented estimate or forecast of expenses or cost.
Once the budget is ready, you need to keep records, and needs approval by Management before project starts. The developed budget should act like baseline for project. Projects measured against budget you have created. It will be your key metrics and you need to keep really good track of where money spends. It is good practice to keep monitoring the spends and actuals versus budget allocated.
What is a Schedule?
A Schedule is the timeframe for you to complete the Project, so a timeline or Gantt chart can be part of schedule. You can create a Schedule using many different tools, from a basic Excel file or PowerPoint, to more advanced tools such as Microsoft Project, Smartsheets and Visio. A Schedule generally has a couple of phases and within those phases groups of tasks, milestones and deliverables
A milestone is basically a major deliverable within the Project. A schedule has milestones to mark important Key Dates and Tasks.
What is resourcing?
Resourcing is the cost of the people, they are costing to the project. Resource cost calculated on the basis of a multiplication factor of Man-Hours Spends on Project and rate per hour. Numbers of hours each resource consuming tied to the schedule. Another way of calculating your resourcing is using a percentage (%) of allocation for a person.
If you know these basics, the next steps involves phases of project. Read more about the Project Phases in our article. What are the Project Phases?
Many companies found project management very efficient like Construction project management companies, IT companies, & real-estate companies etc.
