Mgt 437 - Project Management

Project Management

Tina Guerrero

MGT/437

November 28, 2011

Tammy Marion

Project management is becoming more recognizable and popular in business practices today. Military personnel were the first to use project management as a way to introduce managers to new methods of planning and controlling. According to Kerzner (2006), project management is "designed to make better use of sources by getting work to flow horizontally as well as vertically within the company" (p. 4). In this paper the subject to describe is the definition of a project, the phases and purposes of the project life cycle, and why project management is important in businesses today.

What is a Project?

Projects are temporary activities with specific objectives and goals. Projects exist for the purpose to produce deliverables or measureable outputs. Projects have distinct start and end dates. The organization budgets a certain amount of money for the project to exist. Projects require human and nonhuman resources like people, equipment, and capital to move forward. Projects are multifunctional meaning they can include several functional lines (Kerzner, 2006). Projects can be complex and big or small and simple. One factor to note is projects are short-term and temporary. Projects have a central focus with achieving measurable and specific goals. The line leader is the supervisor of team members working on projects. The line manager and project manager work closely to ensure efficiency with workflows. Selection of team members is a task undertaken by the line manager and project manager. Members are selected because of his or her special knowledge and skills, and the managers negotiate what duties each human resource will perform.

Specific projects can influence business operations significantly depending on the complexity concerning the project. An example of this situation regard a project from Children's Hospital. The hospital was working on a project regarding a new process and pilot of a telemedicine program in the department of neurosurgery. This project took over a year to complete and at times was very time consuming for team members involved within the project. This particular project was highly complex requiring the team to focus more attention on the project, and removing resources from daily functions. Many projects require commitment of the team members to focus daily functions toward the project as a priority. This can temporarily cause regular work duties to suffer, and friction with coworkers as the project is underway.

Project Life Cycle

The project life cycle is an assortment