Project & Project Management

Well, it depends. Project management demand both hard and soft skills to efficiently manage a project.

A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to achieve a particular aim in a certain duration. You may be already managing some sort of project on daily basis. It could be as simple as buying an office chair or launching a vaccine development program.

So, project management can be hard or simple as well. Every project is unique and different in some way. However, the number of projects, site location, team size, project value ($), and project complexity are directly proportional to the level of difficulty for managing the project.

However, the fundamental principle of managing a project remains the same.

While managing the project, a project manager exposed to various demand situation which requires a various set of skills, ranging from core technical to people management skills. All these situations lead to the production of by-product “Project Management Stress” which impacts the project manager and project team as well.

Project management is hard & stressful job, and managing the stress among the project team (including the project manager) is one of the critical responsibilities of the Project manager.

If you want to execute these projects efficiently and successfully, you will need some sort of project management knowledge. Depth of Project management knowledge would depend on the size and complexity of the project you are handling. And acquiring the project management knowledge & skills for complex projects is not easy. It will need both soft (art) & hard (science) skills to manage the project.

That is project management is both an art and science of getting things done.

An art because there is no one definitive answer for how to best manage a project, and a science because there are well-developed techniques and processes that can help significantly to complete a project successfully

Project management is not necessarily hard to learn, but sometimes the hard & soft skills required to efficiently manage a project are very difficult to master.

It sounds so simple yet it’s hard. Why?

While managing a project, much of the work boils down to looking after scope, schedule, and budget, and other stakeholder expectations. This work requires a clear understanding of the knowledge area and the ability to integrate all these areas together so that each function works in a synchronized way. Usually as your experience increases, the understanding of the project management process and subject area increases. However, you do not need to become a subject matter expert in each knowledge area.

If you don’t have any prior experience in managing a project and no deep knowledge of the subject matter in which the project is being executed, then most likely you are going to have a hard time managing the project.

On the other hand, if you have deep expertise in your domain and but are not much aware of the Project management process, there are good chances that you may strive through managing the project successfully if you keep learning about project management through practical execution of work. This is mostly true for all big long-term EPC projects where Project Management is usually chosen from the domain area expertise pool.

Best case scenario would be, if you have cross-functional experience of the various subject area and a good understanding of project management process, then chances are you project management journey would pretty much smooth in terms of working. By utilizing a variety of experience and knowledge of project management, you would be able to provide innovative solutions for the successful management of projects and meeting stakeholder expectations.

Is the Project Management course is for everyone?

Well ..mostly yes. Remember, we all are managing some sort of project on daily basis. it could as simple as buying a smartphone for your mother or launching a rocket for NASA. If you want to execute these projects efficiently and successfully, you will need some sort of project management knowledge. Depth of Project management knowledge would depend on the size and complexity of the project you are handling.

Project management courses are designed for the person who seeks to develop his or her skills in managing projects. A project can be small or big or complex. They are given tools and techniques for structured planning, how to manage change and risks, and how to manage stakeholder expectations.

Conclusion

To begin your project management journey, you must know the basic concept of the project and project management. But you need not be afraid about the complexity of the subject. A continuous learning approach and practicing project processes habits will soon propel you in the pool of project management expertise. Idea is that you should learn to correlate your knowledge, expertise with respect to your daily project work.

Do you find difficulty in applying project management practices? Let me know by leaving a comment below right now.

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