Proj·ect «A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.«, per the PMI PMBOK 6th ed/PMI Lexicon; or «an individual or collaborative enterprise that is carefully planned to achieve a particular aim.«, if you asked Google. But there are more, much more beyond these summarized and beautiful words.
We all are, or have been, Project Managers in some way. Just think about it and ask yourself if you have ever planned a holiday trip to a new place? have you put special effort to organize somebody else party? what about that special meal/dish your prepared with such dedication to amaze that person? Yes, in those moments you did Project Management (PM), maybe at an amateur level but it still was Project Management. However not everything needs professional PM, there are some spontaneous things that should be keep like that to get it’s magic: <Phone rings> Hi! How you doing? …… OK. let’s go to the movies. Pretty cool! But some others, due to its difficult level, time boundary, money available to do it, risk level (of do it or of not do it) and number of people involved, needs an special effort and follow-up, a higher level of thinking to provoke amazing results.
So, what is Project Management? How could we move from junior PM leagues to the professional field of Project Managers? Let’s start with the PMI’s (Project Management Institute) definition: «… the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements.» In other words, is a professional effort (that requires a concentrated mind) by applying specific & devoted ways of working (using software, templates, events) that occur within a time-frame (with lots of energy & inspiring others) to enable or produce something you need to fulfill a higher-order requirement.
Projects tend to co-exist with BaU (Business as Usual) or current business operations, because we can’t just put the world & life on hold until we finish to produce those things that just don’t exist yet (we have been handling Covid-19 pandemic, I mean attending people at hospitals because they already have the disease and preventing much other get contagion with information campaigns & cleaning actions; at same time, Researchers were working on produce a vaccine that more effectively prevent us to get the disease), for this reason, Project Management is a profession were devoted professionals ensure other involved people (like Organization Leaders, Subject Matter Experts, Teams) could be concentrated on the parts/things/services they must achieved to enable others in the process; confidents about they have someone that knows what must be done as a whole effort and help guiding the team. Project Managers provide the discipline needed for any change effort.
Despite the methodology or the framework a Project Manager decide to use (because there plenty of them), all projects go through this cycle:
1.- Pre-Project Work: «Start with the End in mind» they say, well at this point you draft & define the «End»; this is the moment to think & write why we need the project, what happened if we didn’t do it, what are we expecting to happen after we do it, what is the cost-benefit of the effort, how is it aligned with organization’s strategic objectives, when do we need that be produced/enabled.
2. Starting the Project: Right after we confirmed there are important and sufficient reasons about why we must do the project, we need to formalize the start of the effort, gather a special & devoted team to make this comes true and communicate it to the rest of the organization to ensure we all work/support this dare together.
3.- Organizing and Preparing: Now the project team, with the Project Manager included, must work considering the assumptions they got (yeah! prior to this point all was High Level information) and get more details about what specifically they must do, for whom, the length of the activities; then sequence the work needed, organize who will do what, what resources are need.
4.- Carrying Out the Work: Once we have plan and it is accepted, hands-on! They team must start to produce the work they said is needed until we do all that is expected, always comparing among the initial objectives, timeframe & assigned budget (also known as Baseline). If deviations are observed, they must be analyzed and to propose a solution; if they can’t be easily solve (not a normal/expected deviation), this must be informed to the sponsors to confirm if they project could keep going or if it should be cancelled (yeah! sometimes projects don’t go as expected).
5.- Completing the Project: Once everything is produced and integrated, we must take a time to transfer what we created to the team that will keep handling the operation, communicate it to the entire organization & keep moving as a renewed entity.
Projects are an essential part of our humankind evolution, are the efforts (small or big) we undertake to make life easy for us and for the next generations; Project Management is the professionalization of those efforts, to increase the chances of success by doing the appropriate things, in the most suitable time, with available resources; Project Managers are the women or men guiding us throughout this evolution.
Cambalache Projects 