Welcome to the world of project management. Here is project management for you
in six words: initiate, plan, execute, monitor and control, and close. The rest is the
detail. In order to optimize your learning about initiating a project, you will want to
know what a project is and have an overview of the field of project management.
You will also want to know what it takes to be a project manager.
While covering these issues in this part, I will also define the basic terms and
concepts so that we will be on the same page throughout the book.
Although project management as a controlled discipline is a relatively new field,
the concepts of project and management in one or another form are as old as the
struggle of humankind for survival and progress on this planet. Efforts that went
into minor and major human achievements, ranging from control of fire by early
humans to building modern power plants, may be looked upon as projects. All of
us in our personal, family, and corporate lives are always involved in what I would
call projects, regardless of whether we name them so. Building the Leaning Tower
of Pisa was a project, and so was building a tree house in your backyard for your
child. The Human Genome Project was (obviously) a project, but so is writing and
publishing an article in a newspaper. Human history on this planet is full of
projects, and so is your own life. A secret of success is to recognize the projects in
your personal, family, and corporate lives and manage them. It turns out that
project management is largely performed by using a set of processes. In this
chapter, I welcome you to the brave new world of project management by breaking
the ice with four concepts:
• what is a project ?
• what is the project management ?
• what we mean by project lifecycle ?
• and we will talk about Project Management Body of Knowledge.