If you have been tasked with managing a project, you want to ensure that the project stays within budget, and the client is satisfied. Which means you must have a set of skills that can help you complete your assignment in a meaningful way. Learning Project Management is to apply the knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques in the best way possible to project activities, to meet project requirements. Each project is unique even when an organisation has undertaken similar projects before. There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach to project management.

There are standards, tools, processes and activities that can be performed across various industries that will increase the possibilities of success in most cases. Project management is an art because it takes creativity, empathy, and a host of other soft and hard skills to complete a project. Projects operate within an organisation and must be managed within applicable cultural norms and guidelines.

To manage a project, you need to have leadership, communication, information technology, accounting, purchasing and problem-solving skills. Effective Project Management can help the organisation meet its goals and objectives within the applicable constraints. Research shows that even with the best talents, most organisations’ project delivery capabilities are debatable because they did not learn Project Management or hire a Project Manager. So here are 20 reasons to learn Project Management.

 

  1. Initiation.
    initiate project management

This is the first stage of Project Management, and to start a project most properly, you need to learn project management. Initiating is starting the project and ensuring that the project really fulfils a need and then authorising that project. By applying the resources, the project manager leads, guides, and serves the team to carry out the identified work successfully. The project manager and the team develop a plan to deliver the project’s main objectives.

 

 

  1. Planning.

planning project management

They say that ‘If you fail to plan, you plan to fail!’ So plan everything in a perfect manner and for that, you need to learn Project Management. Planning a project includes scheduling, cost management, scope, quality, HR communication and risk management, health and safety. It is the most critical of all components to the project management processes. Without project planning, it is highly unlikely your project will ever conclude, let alone ever successfully conclude on time and on-budget.

Investing enough time in project planning is important so that you develop the appropriate plans for the project to ensure overall project success.

 

 

  1. Scope Management.

scope management

Scope management involves determining and documenting a list of specific project goals. It also includes deliverable tasks, costs and deadlines. Scope Management processes are required to ensure that the project not only includes all the work, but only the work required to complete the project successfully. It is primarily concerned with controlling what is and what not is in the scope.

This also facilitates productive communications with stakeholders and their teams and serves as a tool to manage client expectations, workload balancing and team morale.

 

 

  1. Schedule Management.

project schedule management

Scheduling is also one of the reasons to learn project management because it helps make all our tasks and projects manageable to achieve our goals. We have to develop a schedule because we need to know when the work will occur. So schedule management is establishing the policies documentation for planning, developing, managing, performing and controlling our project schedule. We make hard logic in which projects tasks must happen.

It is all about managing the timely completion of the project. It provides a detailed schedule plan which shows how and when to deliver projects.

 

 

  1. Cost Management.

cost management in project

This activity of project management involves determining how much you need to get the project done, which gives us one more reason why we should learn project management. From construction to information technology projects need materials and resources, that’s why a project manager must estimate the costs as accurately as possible.

It is used to ensure a project is delivered within the cost expectations that have been laid down. This is a critical factor in the project success, and it can also determine whether or not the organisation will make a profit or take a loss on the project. Cost management is not just collecting and measuring how much a project has spent. Still, it consists of planning, estimating, measuring, comparing the cost to a baseline and then taking positive action when necessary.

 

 

  1. Quality Management.

quality management

To determine the quality requirements and make sure that the deliverable is fit for use and conforms to requirements, you need to learn project management. Including the processes and activities of the performing organisation that determine quality policies, objectives and responsibilities so that the project will comply well with the needs for which it was undertaken. Quality management ensures that the project requirements, including product requirement, are met and validated.

Quality is the responsibility of each and every individual in the organisation. From determining a plan for quality to determining if the project is complying with the organisational as well as project policies and procedure, you need to take care of all. Major activities are done to inspect and verify the project’s product, defect, repair, and measuring whether the quality indicators are improving.

 

 

  1. HR Management.

HR Role in project management

Human Resource Management is a knowledge area in project management, giving you one more reason to learn Project Management. It includes organising, developing, managing and leading the project team. The project team sometimes calls the project staff composed of the people with assigned roles and responsibilities to complete the project. Separately they are just a group of individuals and have the same objectives in mind and form a real project team.

First, they identify and document project roles and responsibilities and then confirm people of ability to assign a team necessary to complete required project activities. In this area, they also improve competencies, members interaction and overall team environment to enhance project performance.

 

 

  1. Communication Management.

communication in project management

Communication is the key to everything; it drives the world. For this crucial component, you need to learn project management. Negotiations, meetings, information gathering, techniques etc. have been used as tools, and these are all directly related to communications. So we can say that communication management is involved in all the processes and knowledge areas. Poor communication is one of the top reasons why many projects fail.

Using various communication formats such as planning documents, meeting both in-person and virtual, reports, charts, emails, and even phone calls can make the project a big success. These communications can be part of a large group, small group or one-on-one communication. Regardless of the delivery methods, timing, tone, organisation, clarity, and communication style can impact how the message is received and interpreted.

 

 

  1. Risk Management.

risk management in project management

 

Risk affects our objectives. We have objectives because they deliver benefits and value. That is why you need to learn project management so that you can achieve your goals, which is the key to success by using risk management.

First, we need to identify risk, whether it is an obvious risk or just an assumption. You can filter these risks by understanding the impact it will have on our project. If the impact is significantly less, you can ignore it, but you need to manage it by planning it if it’s not. Preventive plans either eliminate or reduce the risk to such an extent that it doesn’t affect our objectives or goals.

 

 

  1. Procurement Management.

procurement in project management

 

Procurement management involves all of the processes necessary to purchase or acquire products, services, or results needed outside the project team. Whether the project team buys products from outside its organisation or orders them through its own warehouse, these activities are part of project procurement management. Here we use processes involving agreements such as contracts which are legal documents between a buyer and a seller. Procurement management is responsible for managing each of these contracts through its lifecycle, which may end during any phase.

It is conducted with the perspective of the buyer-seller relationship. In this section, you also document project purchasing decisions specifying the approach and identifying potential sellers. It identifies those project needs that can best be met by acquiring products, services or results outside of the project organisation or project team.

 

 

  1. Change Management.

change management in project management

 

Change is something that we don’t find easy to go with. Mostly when the change that has come was uncertain and you didn’t see that coming. To protect yourself from this situation, you need to learn project management to manage change and don’t let it become a hindrance between you and your success. Modern organisations face continuously varying market conditions, customer demands, technologies, input costs and competition.

Organisations must adapt to these shifting forces to survive. To create change, navigators communicate the threat, involve your team, minimise uncertainty, celebrate positive shifts and be as transparent as possible.

 

 

  1. Stakeholder Management.

stake holders in project management

 

Many people and organisations fail to identify stakeholders, let alone managing them, and that’s how they end up being financially weak. That’s why you need to learn project management to identify stakeholders, manage them and engage with them for the best results. Stakeholders can be your sponsors, investors, customers, project team members.

You need to manage the stakeholders and have a proper and continuous engagement with them from their expectations and actions to rate and schedule.  You can use planning techniques, like forming meetings with stakeholders groups and collecting feedback from them directly.

 

 

  1. Execution

execution in project management

Here we get the work done according to what we have been planning. There is no use of planning your project if you fail to execute it well; that’s another reason to learn Project Management. Here we try to implement what we have promised the customer to fulfil the project’s objectives and primary goal. You need to perform activities to accomplish project requirements and also to create project deliverables.

You need to obtain, manage and use the resources including materials, tools, equipment and facilities while implementing the planned methods and standards. Here you have to make sure that you monitor and mitigate any risks or hurdles that are coming up as you are working through the project. You also need to utilise the change management process to keep your project within the scope, which was defined initially. If things need to be added, do it by going through and completing some change management processes to get approval to make that change. This way, your sponsors will agree to the additional schedule or budget or anything that you may need to be added in the project.

 

 

  1. Monitoring and Controlling.

monitoring in project management

Monitoring and controlling consist of the processes required to track, review, and regulate the project’s progress and performance. Identifying any areas in which modifications to the project plan are necessary and initiating the corresponding changes. This process’s main benefit is that the project performance is studied and measured regularly and consistently to locate variances from the actual project management plan.

Here we can control changes and recommend preventive action in anticipation of possible problems. If certain project activities are running behind schedule, you will have to take some corrective measures so that the lost time gets covered up and doesn’t delay the overall project at the end. When you monitor and observe the project performance. You find that something is not in line with the project management plan. You need to make specific changes that are required to be done, that change request will go through the integrated change control, and its impact analysis should be done to approve that change and implement it.

 

 

  1. Profitability

profitability in project management

Project Management allows us to accomplish more work in less time with fewer people and as a result with less cost overall. Profitability is increased in a project management structure. It also provides better control over changes to work scope and makes your organisation more efficient and more effective. All project work will benefit from project management as it increases quality and reduces the majority of power struggles. It allows people to make the right company decisions and deliver solutions to a customer, ultimately growing the business.

 

 

  1. Team Member Benefits.

team benefits in project management

One of the best reasons to learn Project Management is that rework gets reduced because your planning has become better and all your work is being managed according to what you have planned. In project management, scope requirement is clear from both the management side as well as the customer side. Rules and responsibilities are clear and fairly distributed, which improves productivity.

Due to scheduling the resources, the resources allocation becomes much better because the project manager has every data and knows what he wants and when. Communication gets improved throughout the project because there is only one channel: a project manager who is communicating with the team members, management, and customers.

 

 

  1. Innovations

innovation in project management

 

Project management plays a crucial role in developing innovation by analysing the projects when we may come up with ideas about how to improve the product or production system. You also come up with new ways of working with latest machinery as well as new technology. Over the years, innovative businesses have become a big part of the economy. Creative industries grow faster, more successful, productive and competitive.

Modern industry is continuously looking out for innovation and project management is the right area for ideas, suggestions, new products, and new ways of working. People are also becoming more demanding for the same product, for the same organisation and they want a new product, and because of this the organisations can not continue to produce the same product over and over again. To maintain loyalty from their customers, they have to come out with variety, and that’s how project management fulfils this by innovations.

 

 

  1. Customizations

customizations in project management

 

The customer choice and customer needs for customisation and personalisations have reached such immense proportions that for a company to maintain loyalty, they have to keep on coming up with more variations and that too in a short time. The only way to achieve such variety and customisations is through project management and not just operational excellence.

Companies which are unable to adapt to project management end up getting wiped out. Companies that are unable to adapt management are also the same companies that cannot adapt to change.

 

 

  1. Technology

technology in project management

 

Technology is changing rapidly, and so is the adaptation of the new technology and the possibilities it opens up. Technology is racing forward, and so are the organisations trying to keep up or even be a few steps ahead of it. Project management and the various methodologies within project management are the main skills required to ensure technological adaption speed.

Project managers have always been building the future, which has always meant engaging with the latest technology. You should always organise work to take full advantage of available technology and take advantage of the opportunities technology presents to us.

 

 

  1. Project Closure.

project clousure

It is always better to review the project and give it a successful closure to ensure that there are no loose ends that you have not tied up, and for that, you need to learn Project Management. It is a way of assuring that the project’s gains are sustained and gives confidence to the team and leadership that the problem is fixed and won’t reoccur.

It formally transfers management of the project improvements back to the right owner, which means that the project owner benefits from the successful results of the projects.  The project owner is also more likely to provide support for future projects. Creating a checklist and allocating a checklist to various people also helps to make sure things are done.