By Oleander Johnson

What is Project Management?

Project management is organizing and managing your workflows, tasks, and projects for efficiency and completion. When there are conflicting deadlines to meet, project management helps you to prioritize your work appropriately so you can finish them on time. There are many factors to consider when managing a project, such as the employees, technology, and budget. The project manager often ensures these aspects work together as intended. Project management is a universal concept that is useful in virtually any industry and professional market, making it a highly valuable skill to possess.

 Why is Project Management Important?

Project management is important because it ultimately differentiates between a successful and unsuccessful project. If you don’t have anyone managing a set of tasks and projects, how can you ensure that it will be completed properly by the deadline? From initiation to the conclusion, you need someone who understands the ins and outs of what the project needs to succeed. That way, you will be more than equipped to complete the project with minimal disruptions.

Benefits of Project Management

Here are some of the primary benefits you can gain from project management:

  • Helps you remain within your project’s budget.
  • Helps you set and reach your goals more consistently.
  • Helps you to meet deadlines more consistently.
  • Gives you a competitive edge over other similar industries.
  • Makes it easier to mitigate risks and resolve project-related problems when they occur.
  • Increases team coordination so everyone knows their responsibilities and how the project is progressing.
  • Increases productivity so team members can get more work done.
  • Ensures everyone is held accountable for the work they need to complete by their deadlines.
  • Improves the quality of the work.

Types of Project Management Styles

While project management is a universal tool to improve the quality and success of your workflows, different project management styles exist to help you better meet the unique needs of your projects and tasks. Here are the 3 of the most commonly used project management methods:

Agile

Primarily used within the computer, IT, and software development industries, the Agile management style works by continuously monitoring the progress of your project and then making improvements to it as you go along. Instead of completing project phases sequentially, the team completes them parallel to one another, making it easier to find and fix issues quickly without having to start over.

Waterfall

The waterfall project management style follows a more traditional path where one task in the project must be completed before moving on to the next. Like a waterfall, project phases are linear, and progress moves in a single direction, so managing this project involves paying close attention to your timeline to ensure tasks are completed by their deadlines. One incomplete task can halt the entire project’s development.

Lean

The most crucial part of the Lean management method is eliminating wastefulness. This means maximizing your resources for efficiency, like time, money, and personnel. Optimizing your resources can provide more value to your project and users while preserving critical components. You can then use the resources you saved to further the development of other projects in your workflow or pipeline.