Project Management

Project Management

Project management is an essential part of the work environment and

its purpose within business, academic backgrounds and research are

crucial to the development of solutions and products that enable a

company to be successful. The idea of project management is quite

simple; a group of people are detached from the company and given a

goal to focus their efforts on. The size of the group is entirely

dependant on the size of the company. When looking to put together a

project management team, there are two key factors that many, if not

all, companies take into consideration; the skills that each

individual possess in the team and whether these skills can be

utilised in such a way to achieve their goal in a team environment.

Each company requires different qualities that a successful applicant

for Project Manager should fulfil. While trying to find a job in the

summer, I came across a job posting for a Software Project Manager for

a small team. Some of the required attributes that a candidate should

possess are as follows:

“A desire to motivate, share knowledge and provide for continuous

learning…excellent communication skill… Must be able to enthuse and

engage at all levels of business…Develop findings and recommend

solutions to customers as applicable. A good “all-rounder”.”1

Since many large companies and organisations no longer just restrict

their services to their domestic customers, another key requirement

for a Project Manager seems to be the ability to contribute in an

international market. For example, in the current business world,

there are very few companies and organisations that will limit their

research only to Japan, for instance. As a result, the openings for

project managers seem mainly to be located in the European countries

such as France, Germany and the UK. Thus having a position in a

project management firm is not only a lasting responsibility to

national business and research but it is also an international

commitment.

Project management also varies in accordance with the size of the

companies that it is carrying out its work for. In a small business,

the project management team may be assigned projects of a local nature

where their performance will be assessed on a small scale. For

example, if the team was to make a project management plan for a small

local company, the c...

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... two sectors are managed separately,

so in a way it can been seen as a type of project management since

both sectors are detached form each and come together when a new

product is being made. Within these two sectors, there are many

different projects being undertaken in order to make its products

better. Measuring the performance of these two sectors is done by

looking at their yearly revenue and seeing how it changes, i.e. does

it go up, down or fluctuates. Another way to measure the success of

project management within Monsanto is to see how well the new product

is received by the public by doing a type of census that will allow

Monsanto to attain data that will help them to see where they have

gone wrong so that they can improve their services in the future.

References

Websites

- www.monster.co.uk

- www.tenstep.com

- www.pmtoday.co.uk

- www.projectmanagement.com

- www.financial-conferences.com

- www.monsanto.com

Books

- Project management for Dummies – Stanley Portney

- The Art of Project Management – Scott Berkun

- The Practice of Project Management; A Guide to the Business-Focused

Approach – Enzo Frigenti and Dennis Comninos