In this video, we're going to be talking about projects and project management. A project is a temporary endeavor designed to produce a unique product, service or result with a defined beginning and end. Projects are undertaken both for internal and external customers and constrained by time, funding and staffing. Managing projects effectively requires the development of special skills and management strategies. Project management is the practice of initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals in a limited amount of time. It requires careful coordination of a supervisors work and the work of others to achieve objectives while meeting time, budget, and expectations. The objective is a complete project that meets the original goals and objectives while staying within the given constraints, chiefly scope, time, quality, and budget. The PM process consists of five sequential steps. First is initiating, which is the jumping off point. You start with an idea and then define the overall scope and work required to get it done. And e you select the project manager and move on to the next step. During the planning stage, your project manager will choose a team and define how your project will be completed. Teams aren't usually drawn from a single department, but for multiple functional areas of the organization to bring in a variety of skills and perspectives. With your team and plan in place, you can move forward to the next step. In the executing stage, your team is actively creating the product or service you've defined in the previous two steps. In the monitoring and controlling stage, the project manager tracks progress and makes adjustments as needed. Throughout this entire process, successful teams consistently refer to their plans to make sure the project is moving forward. You'll mark the project is done and measure its overall success in the closing stage. Ask team members to document their process and their experiences and reflect on how each step was accomplished, so you can replicate the processes to make future projects easier and successful. PM has many benefits for organizations, managers and employees, here are ten of the biggest ones. Greater efficiency, resources like time, money and personnel are appropriately allocated to the organizations priorities and objectives. Increase job satisfaction by giving workers more responsibility or variety of work and more complex work. From this workers get the opportunity to grow their skills and experience enhanced job satisfaction. Enhanced effectiveness in delivering services. The same strategies that successfully completed one project will serve many times over. Improve growth and development within your team. Positive results command respect and inspire your team to look for ways to perform more efficiently. Enhance collegiality results as team members build relationships outside their usual work unit. Enhance morale comes from planning work in advance and achieving a desired outcome. Everyone involved gets a sense of accomplishment which leads to better feelings about their jobs. Better flexibility, PM allows you to map out a solid strategy while giving you the opportunity to take a smarter direction if one is found. Increased risk assessment, with the players and strategy in place, potential risks will pop up, and that's what you want. PM provides red flags at the right time before you start to work. Increased quality by making output more consistent. Enhanced learning, team members can better understand how their roles and responsibilities fit into the whole organization and make more valuable contributions to the organization's success. A skilled project manager needs particular skills to be successful. We pulled it down to seven that are absolutely essential. We're going to touch on each of these briefly, but there's a lot more to say that we don't have time for now. You'll find more detail on a PDF in the supplementary materials for this module. Leadership, great leadership is essential. It's more than managing tasks, its managing people. Communication, project managers must be able to understand others and be understood. You can't lead effectively if you can't communicate. Negotiation skills, leading a project involves constant negotiations, an inevitable and interpersonal conflicts. Strong negotiating skills will help resolve these disputes. Team management, project managers need to be effective team leaders since teams are in essential part of PM. Task management, project managers have lots of tasks to manage all at once. Expert task management is necessary to foster collaboration, prioritize, and provide instant status updates. Empowerment and delegation, effective delegation is the mechanism good leaders used to empower employees by giving them the accountability and assign tasks and deadlines. A sense of humor, having a different perspective allows you to see a problem differently. Humor relieve stress and helps with morale. Now one thing you probably notice is how these skills affect each other. For instance, you can't lead effectively if you can't communicate. Good delegation skills are essential for managing a team and good leadership is expressed through delegation. Clearly, project managers need a broad set of skills to succeed, and lacking any of them will put a project in danger. And by the way, completing this course will help you understand and build these skills along the way.
