Project Management Fundamentals: An Exploratory Approach

Abstract

This paper explores fundamentals of project management. The purpose of this briefing study is to present key project management fundamentals and concepts to provide a common language for discussion, including what is: A project, project management, project success, a project manager, and a project management plan. The paper showed that project management is an integrative endeavor—an action, or failure to take action, in one area will usually affect other areas. The interactions may be straightforward and well-understood, or they may be subtle and uncertain, for example, a scope change will almost always affect project cost, but it may or may not affect team morale or product quality. These interactions often require trade-offs among project objectives—performance in one area may be enhanced only by sacrificing performance in another. Successful project management requires actively managing these interactions. To help in understanding the integrative nature of project management, and to emphasize the importance of integration, this document describes project management in terms of its component processes and their interactions. A project is temporary, unique, and the product of a multifaceted and progressively elaborated process that produces a solution for a specific objective. For the endeavor to be successful, the project must be accomplished on time, within budget, and to the appropriate degree required to satisfy the objective. For success to be achieved, the project manager must be skilled and operate in an environment that enables a project team to function. Excellence in project management should be viewed as a positive trend in the performance of successful projects.