Project Management: Phases, Methodologies, And Systems To Master It

Project management is the set of methodologies to plan and direct the tasks and resources of a project. A project comprises a specific set of operations designed to achieve a specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and temporary ( SMART) objective.

The Objectives Of Project Management Are:

• Manage the start and evolution of a project;
• To establish the specific objectives of the project it is necessary to organize a series of meetings. 
• The objectives of these projects can be expressed in: results (such as the creation of a new headquarters); consequences (such as relocation of employees to new headquarters); benefits (reducing facility costs) or strategic goals (such as doubling corporate performance in three years).

When developing a project there are 3 variables to take into account: time, cost, and scope. These three variables are part of all projects and services to ensure the quality of the project. These variables together form the Quality Triangle.

Is There An ISO Standard To Manage Projects?

The ISO standard that establishes standards for the direction and management of projects is the ISO 21500 standard. The main objective of this regulation is to provide guidance to organizations in their management. The structure of the ISO 21500 standard continues with the guidelines of the PMBOK, one of the certificates of the Project Management Institute (PMI) or project management institute.

PMI is an organization that offers project management training. 

The PMI Divides Projects Into 5 Phases:

1. Feasibility study of the project

This step is done because, often, the benefit that the company would obtain by implementing the project is greater than the investment. 

• Creation of the project tracking record in enterprise software;
• Previous analysis of the scope of the project (what scope the project should have, what methodology is going to be carried out, which departments should be involved, etc. is considered);
• Analysis of project implementation risks ;
• Analysis of the expected benefit and cost, the feasibility of the agreed deadlines, and the quality that is intended.
• If the balance of the feasibility analysis is positive, you can proceed to the second phase

2. Comprehensive development of the effort to be completed

To establish these tasks and resources with the greatest precision, it is necessary to:

• Review project scope analysis;
• Make estimates of effort, costs, and resources;
• Define the project plan.
• If the project goes ahead, all this information must be written in the terms of the agreement.

3. Project execution

Some project management software allows you to automatically create a report. Problems often arise at this stage. The actions carried out during this stage are:

• Assign planned tasks to available resources;
• Run the scheduled tasks;
• Manage change requests.

4. Monitoring and control of work

In this stage, it is verified if all the planning is being fulfilled and if all the quality expectations are being exceeded. With a project management module, it is possible to carry out an up-to-date follow-up of the processes, including progress, times, and costs. In this phase, essentially four types of activities are carried out:

• Track planned tasks and milestones;
• Deliverable management (including quality control);
• Generation of monitoring reports (reports for directors or project managers informing whether the project is going according to plan).

5. Project closure

The failure analysis of the project will make future decisions more realistic and safe. To carry out this evaluation, a checklist (or control list) is usually used. 

The tasks of this stage are:

• Formal closure of the project by all those involved (stakeholders);
• Realization of the backup ( safety copy ) of the project;
• Analysis of the results with respect to the initial estimates;
• Updating the knowledge base with everything learned.