Project management involves employing processes, methods and skills to oversee a specific initiative with an end date that has strategic value and produces tangible deliverables, distinct from ongoing business operations.

Projects are temporary endeavors with specific focuses that often need special techniques for success. Project management skills are highly valued across industries.

Planning

Planning is the cornerstone of project management. This phase entails setting goals and objectives as well as communicating expectations among stakeholders, creating timelines, and budgets. Setting measurable goals helps prevent scope creep or cost overruns from happening during subsequent stages.

At this stage, a project manager must identify which resources will be required to complete each task and assess its timetable for completion. They then prioritize tasks according to importance and interdependencies – an invaluable step when working on complex or multifaceted projects with numerous components that must be assembled in an organized fashion.

This phase also involves evaluating and mitigating project risks. Common risks can include scope creep, changes to project sponsors or unexpected costs; therefore it is vital that assumptions or uncertainties be communicated to all team members so they can be addressed in a timely fashion.

Determine whether the project complies with your organization’s strategic direction by assessing its benefits and risks as well as comparing it with similar projects.

Execution

Project management demands an organized approach for ensuring a project’s successful conclusion. Known as execution, this stage involves carrying out the project in an expedient fashion while fulfilling client and user requirements with quality. Project managers need to coordinate all resources available to complete each task successfully: human, financial and technological assets are monitored closely during this phase.

Though your best plans may include tools and processes in place to deal with unexpected obstacles, projects rarely go according to schedule. Therefore, having tools in place that enable you to overcome unexpected hurdles is absolutely crucial for success.

Project Execution Phase is where schedule, tasks and roles allocation is finalized as well as optimizing team capacity to meet project deadlines. KPIs or metrics will also help monitor progress here.

One of the primary causes of project delays is due to scope creep and additional stakeholder requests, so it’s critical that a robust project management process includes change management and risk analysis. A common challenge during this stage is communication issues; therefore, having a centralized, transparent platform for collaboration that facilitates task statuses sharing, workflow reporting, role assignment and automations would come in handy here – keeping everyone informed will help reduce miscommunication and project delays.

Control

Project Control is the practice of overseeing your project according to its original plans, from budgeting and expenditures, resource allocation and risk identification and mitigation. Project control also assists you in managing long-term costs such as time and money as well as reaching goals more efficiently.

This part of the Project Management Body of Knowledge comprises five process groups, including Monitoring and Controlling. This subprocess aims to measure performance against baseline standards; early identification of any deviation can make correcting it much simpler.

As the first step of this process, establishing a work breakdown structure (WBS) is essential. A WBS breaks down a project’s scope into discrete tasks and assigns them to specific team members – helping clarify roles and responsibilities, prevent conflicting tasks from emerging, and guarantee all deliverables are completed on time and within budget.

Setting performance metrics for a project, measured using Earned Value Management, is the next step to successfully managing it. Earned Value Management provides essential insight into progress made on a project and helps predict its future trends; additionally it gives project managers essential information needed for corrective actions when necessary.

Monitoring

Project monitoring is an integral component of project management as it helps ensure all tasks are being completed on schedule and correctly. Furthermore, it identifies any issues which arise during the course of the project so they can be addressed quickly – especially useful for long-term endeavors as this allows teams to stay focused on their tasks rather than become distracted by outside influences.

Monitoring is accomplished by tracking actual performance against expectations, collecting and analyzing data on various indicators according to predetermined standards, identifying strengths and weaknesses within the project, as well as increasing learning from experience. Monitoring provides only short-term assessment while evaluation takes into account long-term impacts of projects.

Once all the information collected during monitoring has been used in the controlling phase, it becomes possible to actively adjust performance so that the project stays true to the original plan and objectives set. Schedules are closely observed; cost estimates updated frequently; changes implemented as necessary. In order to effectively monitor a project it requires having the proper tools and reporting system in place – Unito can make tracking each individual task much simpler while helping ensure deadlines are met on schedule.