Abstract
Project management is the structuring of a project in terms of visible and manageable activities, which are the building blocks for executing the project across its lifecycle. In particular, one of the critical phases of the lifecycle of a project is project planning. Project planning must include the main strategy for a working method within the project team. It should structure the tasks and describe the tools for monitoring the execution and controlling the project's progress. On the one hand, this chapter describes the essential steps of a project. On the other hand, it presents the most used perspectives and methods such as PMBOK, PRINCE, Agile, Scrum, and supporting technologies such as Asana, BaseCamp, Trello, Slack, or Jira.
TopIntroduction
The purpose of this chapter is to provide a general overview of project management (PM) with some reference to how this is applied in an EPS course. EPS students participate in PM courses and practical sessions and are guided through supportive supervision by senior staff to train PM skills along with the program. However, PM is such a vast field that here we can only provide an outline of what it is and a set of highly appropriate references and resources. The introduction of the chapter presents some terminology and essential concepts. The following section briefly describes the basic elements of a project, and the subsequent expands on these descriptions and elements. After that, a section deals with the all-important topic of planning and is followed by a section describing the importance of proper closure. The last two sections, respectively, describe some of the most common PM methodologies and available supporting software. The chapter ends with a short conclusion.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Project Management: The activity of organizing and controlling a project.
Deliverable: Something that must be completed or provided as part of a project.
Client: Someone who receives professional services from an organization.
Team: People working together as a group in order to achieve something.
Quality: The totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs.
Stakeholders: Persons and organizations such as customers, sponsors, performing organization, and the public that are actively involved in the project or whose interests may be positively or negatively affected by execution or completion of the project.
Work Breakdown Structure: Decomposition of the defined scope of the project or program into progressively lower levels consisting of elements of work.