Project Management in Summary

At a high level, there are three main things to remember about project management:

Project Stages. The project life cycle consists of five stages, technically called process groups: initiating, planning, executing, monitoring/controlling, and closing.

In the Project in a Box tool, these process groups can be mapped to commonly known project stages: starting, organizing and preparing, carrying out the work, and closing. This is the road map of how projects are organized and developed
Knowledge Areas. The project processes, tools, and techniques, and skills that are performed to manage projects constitute nine project management knowledge areas: communication management, cost management, human resource management, integration management, procurement management, quality management, risk management, scope management, and time management.
The Environment you work in. A project is performed in a project environment that is shaped by many elements, such as organizational culture, organizational structure, enterprise environmental factors, organizational process assets, and the maturity of the organization.

Other things to remember:

◆ The difference between operations and projects. The activities inside an organization are generally organized into groups, which fall into two categories— operations and projects. Operations usually consist of ongoing routine work, whereas a project has a goal to generate a unique product, service, or result in a finite time— that is, it has a planned beginning and a planned end. For eample, in an Enactus Team, the Executive team, Faculty Advisers, Business Advisory Board, University Administration and the International Enactus organization perform the "operations" of Enactus. Projects in Enactus are lead by project managers in project teams of student volunteers

◆ Why do we start projects? Organizations launch projects for different reasons, such as to meet a business or legal requirement or to take on an opportunity offered by the market. The underlying motivation behind taking on these opportunities, however, is the strategy of the organization.

For example, Enactus is an international non-profit organization that brings together student, academic and business leaders who are committed to using the power of entrepreneurial action to improve the quality of life and standard of living for people in need. Guided by academic advisers and business experts, the student leaders of Enactus create and implement community empowerment projects around the globe. The experience not only transforms lives, it helps students develop the kind of talent and perspective that are essential to leadership in an ever-more complicated and challenging world. This is the motivation for Enactus projects.

◆ Project Management. A project, like anything else in an organization, needs to be managed. Project management is the application of knowledge and skills to project activities in order to meet the project objectives. It involves performing a set of processes that constitute nine knowledge areas of project management: communication management, cost management, human resource management, integration management, procurement management, quality management, risk management, scope management, and time management. Each process is part of a knowledge area and has a membership in one of five process groups: initiating, planning, executing, monitoring/controlling, and closing. The process groups represent different stages of a project life cycle.

◆ Stakeholders. Each project has a set of individuals or organizations that it influences positively or negatively, and these individuals and organizations are accordingly called positive and negative stakeholders. Some of these stakeholders may influence the project. Therefore, you must identify all the project stakeholders, positive and negative. The different project stakeholders might have different and conflicting expectations, which you need to analyze and manage.

◆ Environment. Each project runs in an environment that influences it. This project environment consists of elements such as organizational culture, organizational structure, environmental factors, and organizational process assets. The structure of the performing organization could be functional, "projectized", or matrix. On one end of the spectrum, a project manager is usually part-time and has little or no authority in a functional organization. On the other end, the project manager is full-time and has high to full authority in a projectized (project-based) organization. In the middle of the spectrum are matrix organizations, in which a project manager has low to high authority. Some organizations have a composite structure, which is a hybrid of these three basic structures.

As discussed before, Enactus is a project-based or projectized organization.

◆ Projects relation to Programs and Portfolios. A project can be standalone or part of a program, which is a collection of interrelated projects and possibly non-project work. A project can also be part of a portfolio, which is a collection of programs, projects, and other related work.