Is Project Management the best method of implementing change?

Is project management the best method of implementing change? I think, it is good or best to have a method of project management in a project, in order to have a best and good result in the project delivery in a project. According to the Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK), project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities in order to meet the project requirements.


When we say project management, it is comes from the two words which is the project and the management. Project is a task of work to bring about a beneficial change and which has a start and an end or a multi-disciplinary team who brought together for the project, has constraints of cost, time and quality, and has a scope of work that is unique and involves uncertainty. A good example of a project is an introduction of an improvement to an existing process.


In project management as what I have learned in our discussion, project management has evolved a discipline to managed the new and unusual. It has an objectives of defining the project, reduce it to a set of manageable task (Work Break-down Structure), obtain appropriate and necessary resources, build a team or teams to perform the project work, plan the work and allocate the resources that will be needed to do the task or the project, monitor and control the work, report progress to senior management and the project sponsor, closed down the project when it is completed and lastly review it to ensure the lessons are learned and widely understood the project. All of these are the best way or the best method for implementing change in a project.


In a project management there is a project manager in which the project manager will be the leader of the project team and will be responsible for ensuring the process of making the project. So the project manager will gain the approval for the project aim and the terms of reference, selecting and leading the team and setting individual objectives, ensuring the feasibility study is complete, ensuring that the project is planned in appropriate detail, allocating and monitoring the work and the cost, motivating the team, reporting progress back to the organization, helping the team to solve a project problems, achieve through the team and the goals, and reviewing and closing down the project. In managing a project, you must have the skills in order for you to manage it successfully. It includes business knowledge, the technical skills and the individual and the team leadership skills. Individual Skills are the personal skills in a team; these skills are likely to include a good presentation and persuasive skills, good written skills, high energy and credibility. Team Skills is very important, it will appreciate the differing needs of both individuals and the project team at the different stages of the project. And the Technical Skills, it is good to have a technical skill in setting objectives, planning complex tasks, negotiating resources, financial planning, contract management, monitoring skills, managing creative thinking and problem solving, as well as their own specialist topic. 

In implementing a project there is also a tools and techniques which are being used during a project life cycle of it. So here are some of the tools and techniques which are being used in a project management. First, verifying the objective setting – it is a kind of technique in which it ensures that the objectives for the project can be measured and verified to ensure that they have met all of it. Second, Gantts Charts – it is used to display the result of your analysis in a simple bar chart format that can be readily understood by those who have not involved in the detail of the project. Third, Brain Storming - it is a technique used in all stages of the project in order to encourage creative thinking and solve the problems. Fourth, Work Break-down Structure (WBS) – it is a technique to analyze deeply the content of the work and the cost by breaking it down into a sub-components parts or into a smaller elements. Fifth, Critical Path Analysis – it is used to analyze and identify the tasks that are critical in determining the overall duration of the project. Sixth, Milestone Planning – it is used to show the major steps that are needed to reach the goal or the project on time. And lastly, accrued cost and earned value analysis – it is used to measures and enables the progress of the project to be monitored in financial terms and conditions.


In a project team there are also involving in a project and these are the project sponsor, the project sponsor should be a senior in the organization who has the most to gain from the project’s success and most lose if it fails. And the project customer, the project customer should either be a member of the project team or represented on that team.


All of these I have been stated above are some of the important task and techniques that can proved that a project management is the best thing in implementing a change to a project. It is because; it will provide a process of delivering a changes and a perfect result in implementing a project. I can say that this is very useful in managing a project because it specifies the task which would be carrying out the life of the project and can have a good quality result of a project.


“A project without a strategy is like an airplane weaving through stormy skies, hurled up and down, slammed by the wind, lost in the thunderheads. If lightning or crushing winds don't destroy it, it will simply run out of gas. “- By Alvin Toffler