Hey Everyone,

I am going to write about Project Management. Here, I will be starting with the basics of project definition, characteristics and slowly will be moving into the depth of its working in the organization.

What is a Project?

People are familiar with “project” on a regular basis directly or indirectly. Even, we use the term “project” in most of our conversations. The owner of a house may say to the person living on rent,” My main project this week is to construct a garage and widen the side boundary walls.” We get to see lots of project works in cities or countries like constructing a new tower, constructing paths and trials of high-speed rails, etc.

There are many definitions of a “project” if one can frame it into a sentence. All kinds of projects share some similarities in features or requirements. The main root or aim of a project is the “Necessity”.

According to PMI(Project management institute),

“A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result .”

So, the temporary nature of projects means that it has a definite beginning and end. The end is reached when the project’s objectives have been achieved or when the project is terminated due to failure in fulfillment of its objectives or the project is no longer needed.

What differentiates a project from a business operation?

Definitely, a project has certain distinctive attributes which distinguish it from daily ongoing work or any business operation.

Projects exist to bring about a product or service that hasn’t existed before. So, in that sense, the project is unique i.e. new, and has never been done before. Maybe it’s done before in some similar fashion but never exactly in this way. For example, Ford Motor Company is in the business of designing and assembling cars. Each model that Ford designs and produces can be considered a project. The models differ from each other in their features. But, the actual assembly of the cars is considered an operation (i.e., a repetitive process that is followed for models). In contrast with projects, operations are ongoing and repetitive. They involve work that is continuous without an ending date and with the same processes repeated to produce the same results. The purpose of operations is to keep the organization functioning while the purpose of a project is to meet its goals.

Project characteristics

Projects have several characteristics:

-> Projects are unique.

-> Projects are temporary in nature and have a definite beginning and ending date.

-> Projects are completed when the project goals are achieved or it’s determined the project is no longer needed.

A successful project is one that meets or exceeds the expectations of the stakeholders.

(Project stakeholders - Individuals and organizations who are actively involved in the project, or whose interests may be positively or negatively affected as a result of project execution or successful project completion.)

A project has three constraints according to triple constraint theory; such as, Time, budget/cost and scope. These constraints are tied to each other.

1. A time constraint means you must complete your project within a specified deadline.

2. A cost constraint means that you're limited to a specific project budget.

3. A scope constraint means the total amount of tasks completion required to fulfill the project's goals.

Which project methodologies are followed in organizations nowadays?

Most followed project methodologies in any IT organization are different practices of Agile methodology and Waterfall methodology in few. But, Agile methodologies are followed in most organizations nowadays because of the fast-developing and competitive environment.

Reasons of preference for Agile methodology over waterfall approach

In today's world, Everything is fast-paced and goal-driven. The term “Agile” also depicts that. A project is first planned, followed by those plannings coming to action, and finally, monitoring the progress and milestones achieved. So, when a project is planned, everything related from working in a project to a smooth process is taken into consideration like business requirements, customer expectations, estimated time, budget, and resources required to complete the project and also, the risks associated as well as benefits to the organization, etc.

So, despite the planning, the customer requirements may change in the future during the project's ongoing phase. It becomes very complicated to accommodate those changes into the current process during the development or building phase. Here, Agile methodologies play a key role in adapting the changes and delivering the required product or outcome in a timely manner because, in Agile, we work on chunks or modules or tiny parts of the whole project instead of building the whole product at a time.

In the traditional waterfall approach, the process of building a project is sequential and linear. Only after the completion of the previous phase, the next phase can be moved. So, it becomes very tedious or hectic to go back if anything goes wrong or any fault occurs in the previous phase and fix it. Therefore, It requires proper planning before heading to the building phase which consumes really much time in terms of weeks or months. Because no organization would really like to see any shortcomings or failures during the process in order to deliver in an estimated time.

Agile methodology helps in overcoming these shortcomings in the following ways. We can also write down its advantages;

1. Agile methodology is less prone to error. In the waterfall approach, it heavily relies on initial requirements and documentation but in the Agile approach, documentation is focused very less and more focus is carried upon the development and fixing issues or accommodating the changes.

2. More flexible. In the Waterfall model, it’s difficult to go back and make any changes once the step is completed. Here, the customer gets to see the working version or demo of the project early. So, it provides the customer an idea of the product being developed and if any changes are required, the Customer can specify in that cycle or phase.

3. Building and deliveries are fast. In Agile, The emphasis is on getting working product or software into the hands of users as quickly as possible. Here, the customer has the opportunity to experience it at the earliest. It is based on iterative improvement and user-centric development. So, in the end, Outcome is definitely a quality product.

To summarize Agile methodology in a few words,

Agile is an iterative approach to project management and software development that helps teams deliver value to their customers faster and with fewer headaches. Instead of betting everything on a "big bang" launch, an agile team delivers work in small, but consumable, increments. ( Source:- Atlassian)

In the next blog, The focus will be based upon Agile methodology in a bit detail and its workings.

Drop a like you found it useful or got a basic overview of project management to some extent. Thank you!