What Are the Types of Project Management Relevant to Us?
What are the Definitions of Project Management Relevant to Us?
The previous video suggested there are many types of projects. Some of them very large, time consuming and complex while other projects are short, sharp and quick. Not forgetting our emergency projects requiring a quick but carefully controlled response.
But what makes a project a project?
What is Project Management? More Specifically What is a Project?
Nevertheless all projects have ‘a start point and an end point’ and all projects have ‘a single goal’ but may incorporate many objectives and challenges on the way to achieving that goal.
A project is defined by the Project Management Institute as “… a temporary in that it has a defined beginning and end in time, and therefore defined scope and resources.”
And they also say that “… a project is unique in that ihttps://www.pmi.org/about/learn-about-pmi/what-is-project-managementt is not a routine operation, but a specific set of operations designed to accomplish a singular goal. So a project team often includes people who don’t usually work together – sometimes from different organisations and across multiple geographies.” (What is Project Management | PMI)
What are the types of Project Management relevant to us?
On a very basic level, project management includes the planning, initiation, execution, monitoring, and closing of a project. Many different types of project management methodologies and techniques exist, including traditional, waterfall, agile, and lean.
Generally speaking, the project management process includes the following stages: planning, initiation, execution, monitoring, and closing.
From start to finish, every project needs a plan that outlines how things will get off the ground, how they will be built, and how they will finish. The project manager puts it all together. Every project usually has a budget and a time frame. Project management keeps everything moving smoothly, on time, and on budget. That means when the planned time frame is coming to an end, the project manager may keep all the team members working on the project to finish on schedule.
Projects could be described as (1) large and complex; (2) smaller simpler projects and (3) rapid response projects. The video gives examples of each of these and the different management considerations in each case.
There are also some interesting models classifying projects and project managers – for example, Carsten Lund Pedersen and Thomas Ritter (2017) classify project managers as Prophets, Gamblers, Experts or Executors – maybe you can relate to each type…. Maybe you are one of them! Types of projects have also been described by Eddie Obeng (2016) as ‘Painting By Numbers’; ‘Movies’; ‘Quest’ and ‘Lost In The Fog’ projects – you may even recognise those descriptions from projects you have been involved in already!
“As a project manager, as a business, we have to understand the type of project that we are working on because each type of project has a different management strategy associated with it. More specifically, we have to apply our effort in different places and in different ways and spend our money differently depending on what our problems are.”
Eddie Obeng
The diagram below examines which type of project manager is right for which project.
Source: Harvard Business Review: The 4 Types of Project Manager