Project Management

If you decide to go to school, especially if you decide to go to school a little later in life, my advice is, have a little fun. I’m in a project management theory class right now, and while I’m not in any way belittling project management – I mean it is the degree I chose, after all, sometimes it’s just way too much fun to be a little silly with it all. For example….

Whether as a formal part of a job or tackling a project around the house, the 5 phases of a project life cycle, as well as many of the sub phases of the lifecycle, are almost always present in one form or another. Saturday mornings when it’s time to clean house (initiation), I create a list (planning), I gather together the materials I need to get the job done – vacuum, glass cleaner, rags, dusting wax, etc. (resources), divide tasks between my husband and myself (forming team), do the housework (execution). I suppose that if you asked my husband he’d probably say, that I’m pretty good at the controlling phase, perhaps, more so than is required. Then we come to the closing phase which might be a simple glance back at the list to see if we got everything on it. We might also talk about future tasks and projects we need to do around the house. One could include many of the other subsets of the 5 phases in the list. Risk assessment might include acknowledging the possibility that we could be interrupted or sidetracked with other tasks or company dropping by. I might have an uncooperative team member (i.e., my husband) who thinks that the Saturday morning project should be sleeping in or going out for coffee. I’ll need to create a contingency plan like cleaning house on Sunday instead of Saturday, so I’ve built-in a contingency plan for a possible time delay. If we look at any task from taking a shower to organizing a global network for the corporation, the project life cycle is present. A project can’t really be completed without each of these steps. Even when the steps are somewhat subconscious like pulling out the vacuum cleaner to clean the carpets, it’s still a phase of the project.

Well, ok, so it’s not all just fun and games. There is the more serious aspect, and while I do want to have fun, this blog, at the moment anyway, is truly about finding a job in Colorado. So, I’ll post the rest of my paper below to keep things on an even keel.

The more complex a project the more important it is that we understand PMBOK. The project life cycle include the 5 steps: initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing. However the project management life cycle includes several processes within each phase. The Project Management Institute divides the project life cycle into 44 management process (Egan, 2006). An understanding of these processes will help to make the LRH project a smooth efficient project.

Unlike my housecleaning scenario above, the LRH project is a complex project involving many people and sub projects. Within the planning process, for example, I need to have a plan for each of the subprojects, such as updating the display and the presentation, training the sales people, making travel and shipping arrangements, evaluating the need for clothing and placing the orders. All of this planning involves processes such as cost estimating and budgeting, human resource planning, risk management and identification. During the controlling phase, processes such as cost and schedule control, managing the team, reporting and risk monitoring, will be necessary to complete this phase.

The project management life cycle phases are present in all projects, large or small, to one extent or another. The project management processes may not all be necessary in all projects, but awareness of them and a conscious decision to include or not includes each of the processes is beneficial. Most of the project life cycle is just the natural order of things. The more one follows the phases in a conscious and orderly manner, while utilizing the project management process, the less likely it will be that major problems will occur.