Project Management

As a student of the University of Puerto Rico Business School, I'm interested in everything that has to do with businesses, organizing, planning, and directing. Ever since high school that passion grew more and more, to the point that I decided to start preparing that path for a career in Business Administration. Unfortunately, the general program on business administration would not be the BEST choice. It's better to concentrate on a subject and later, as people say, go where the wind takes you. So now the 'lucky' concentration to have me is Operation Management, which deals with the supply chain of a company and the general and basic processes that must be taken care of in a company in order for to function correctly. Many times these basic concepts are taken for granted and in the past years the companies has acknowledged the importance of the position.

This semester I attended a conference directed by Carlos Corrada on Project Management. Carlos Corrada is a PMP, which stands for Project ManagementProfessional. He specializes in application development.

Let’s first define what Project Management is according to dictionary.comhttp://dictionary.reference.com/:

"The process of planning, organizing, staffing, directing and controlling the production of a system.”

As he begin to explain basic information, and I say basic because like any other career it is impossible to explain in detail the complete essence of it in less than 2 hours, he started describing the most important factors in project Management: communication and concentration on staff needed. Having in mind that project management deals with the production of something, may it be an event, a product, an application, etc. etc. therefore most part of the project assigned will be planning (have in mind that planning is basically intangible).  Communication is key to maintain everything on the right and same track.  Together you have concentration on the staff needed. You see this from two points. First it is necessary to have the right amount of personnel needed, if you have too many you’ll be losing money and if you have scarce then you won’t be able or have trouble completing the tasks on time.

 

Triple constraint: cost, time, quality.

There is a triple constraint: cost, time, and scope/quality. These three factors are the base of a project that will define if it excel or not. Affecting one will affect another factor. For example, if you want to reduce the cost, quality will be affected (and not for the best). If you want to increase quality, time and cost will be affected and so on.

The steps in organizing a project consist of the following:

1-     The Start- This step consists of the first meeting with the customer. The questions: Purpose of the project? What are the requirements? What are the limitations? What is the problem to solve? How much money?, among others are answered. During this step it is important to ask which ever question, no matter how dumb you think it is, in other to make less errors during the going of the project

2-     Process- This step focuses on the planning of the project. Setting deadlines and goals, the documentation of everything, the budget, identifying the risks.

3-     Implementation- Here the plan is implemented and acted upon in the best and easiest possible way. Monitoring and control are extremely important in order to maintain the course to the quality expected and the meet the deadlines established.  It’s never wrong to give more information than what the customer asks and continue to communicate and document everything.

4-     Closing- Here the acceptance of the completion of the project is expected. A detailed and descriptive final Report is due. Also it is important to find the errors made during the process so that for the next time/ project you won’t make them again.

 

*Even though it is not necessary to be certified in as a PMP, it certainly helps and give back up in the resume. The most important thing is to acquire experience in the area you want to work on. This will give you the necessary skill, to later with time, sign a project on your own. If you want more information on the Project Management you can visit Project Management Institute.