Project management requires the manager to apply various skills, techniques, tools, and fields of knowledge to create plans allocate resources to these plans, estimate risks, organization, acquire resources, assign tasks, direct and control the project’s information systems. Project management deals with issues that revolve around four main aspects of projects. These include scope, time cost, and risk. Scope deals with the amount and type of work that is required for the completion of the project. Project manager decides all of the required work for the project and makes sure to not exceed the initial scope of the project. Otherwise, the project might become too expensive to be completed, or delayed for too long.
The second aspect is time. The objective of the project manager is in deciding how much time should be dedicated to the project. To properly establish the required amount of time for the project, the manager often considers the required amount of time for each component of the project and then breaks down each of the components into activities and tasks. Then the manager creates a schedule based on these activities and tasks.
The third aspect concerns the cost of the project. Project managers determine to cost of the project based on the time to complete the project multiplied by the cost of human resources required for its completion. If the project involves information systems, the cost of hardware, software, and the space required for the work. The objective of the manager is to develop and monitor a budget for the project.
The fourth aspect of project management is quality. By examining the quality of the project, a person can judge if the final result of the project is adequate for the objectives it was created for. In the case of information systems, the quality is often determined by the improvement to the performance of the organization and the decision-making of their users. The accuracy and speed of information provided by information systems can also be used to determine their quality. The objective of the project manager is to provide a quality result for the project.
The final aspect that project managers have to deal with is the risk. It involves the estimation of potential issues that can occur during the project’s development process. These problems can affect the time required for the project, its costs, the quality of the project, and in worst cases the project might fail if the issues are underestimated. This makes the estimation of risks one of the most important objectives of the project manager.
Project managers are essential for every project of the organization because of the aspects of their work. A project without a proper manager is likely to provide poor results. These results include the following issues. A project can exceed its budget in a way that can be devastating for the organization. For example, this is a common issue in film production. A poorly managed project can go beyond its schedule which creates delays and therefore can create additional costs. Another issue can come from the technical performance of the project being worse than originally expected. Finally, the project can simply be worse than it was envisioned. The work of the project manager can address most of these issues. The main objectives of the project manager require them to be aware of the possible negative results and plan the project accordingly.