Several years ago I’ve posted a series dedicated to project management. It was quite hard, fill with technical details and not very clear for common understanding of project management. Today I would like to return to this topic but on quite another level: try to look at project management as simple thing, that can be used not only for large enterprise activities but also in our everyday life.
It’s my firm believe, that if we use project management to handle some of our outside events and activities, we can achieve much better results and have much more enjoy )))) Project management can help us to keep the goal, set priorities, track our progress and, as a result, succeed in our affairs.
First, we must understand, when we face a project. For some doings project management can help greatly, and quite on the contrary, it would lead to overload and fail being applied in wrong place. So, how to identify when we need a project approach? Below there are listed some definitions that will help us in this task.
| Project | Operations |
| Implement change | Support current state |
| Has end date | Ongoing operations |
| Team is disbanded, when project is closed | Team stays together |
| Work is unique | Work is repeatable |
| Budget is for project tasks and needed resources | Fixed budget |
The main difference:
- Operations management is what runs the life.
- Project management is what changes the life.
Project has defined start and end dates and we have to implement the required change or achieve desired result. When project is finished – it is closed, and we return to our current activities.
We can find projects in different spheres, not only with professional background. Some project examples from our life:
- Holding an event,
- Holiday trip,
- Birthday party,
- Moving to a new place,
- Birth of a child,
- Getting education.
And you can probably think of hundreds of other examples relevant to your everyday life. Next time I will dwell on project initiation and try to create some real example for better description how it looks like.