What is obvious from Chapter 3 of the textbook is how critical the role of project manager is. Project managers may be the most vital part of the project considering the decisions they have to make in regard to planning and budgeting, as well as keeping the project on track. The project management process is broken down into four phases: initiation, planning, execution, and closeout. A surprise for me is that in the example given in the book, creating the scope and budget doesn’t happen until the end of the planning phase. I expected at least preliminary versions of each to be created during the initiation phase to give the approval and steering committees information to decide whether or not the project should be approved and go forward.
To me, planning might be the most important phase. If mistakes are made in terms of creating the project plan, developing the budget, scheduling the tasks and allocating resources, the project can be doomed before it ever even begins. Especially since a lot of that has to do with estimation, it probably is a big challenge for new project managers if there isn’t similar historical data from the company to reference.
Closing down the project is the phase I’ve seen most neglected in my experience. Specifically, in my experience, the post project reviews aren’t always done. The reviews are important as a way to generate feedback and understand lessons learned from the project to improve futures ones.
Leave a Reply