JMH Consulting

Project Management is the discipline of planning, organising, controlling and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives. It is role that is closely related with Programme Management.

A project is a temporary endeavour, having a defined beginning and end, undertaken to meet particular goals and objectives, usually to bring about beneficial change or added value to an organisation. The temporary nature of projects stands in contrast to business as usual (BAU), which are repetitive, permanent or semi-permanent functional work to produce goods or services.

In practice, the management of these two work flows is often found to be quite different, and as such requires the development or engagement of distinct technical skills. Risks and Issues together with Concerns, Constraints and Countermeasures need to be logged and managed. Financial and resource governance needs to be applied and project workshops require facilitation followed by the timely circulation of comprehensive minutes, actions and decision.

The primary challenge of project management is to achieve all of the project goals and objectives within the project constraints. Typical constraints are scope, time, resource and budget. A secondary and more ambitious challenge is to optimise the allocation and integration of inputs necessary to meet pre-defined objectives.