Project management

Project management is the process of supervising the work of a team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. This information is usually described in project documentation, created at the beginning of the development process. The primary constraints are scope, time and budget. The secondary challenge is to optimize the allocation of necessary inputs and apply them to meet predefined objectives. The objective of project management is to produce a complete project that complies with the client's objectives. In many cases, the objective of project management is also to shape or reform the client's brief to feasibly address those objectives. Once the client's objectives are established, they should influence all decisions made by others involved in the project—for example, project managers, designers, contractors, and subcontractors. Ill-defined or overly rigid project management objectives are detrimental to the decision-making process. A project is a temporary and unique endeavor designed to produce a product, service or result with a defined beginning and end (usually time-constrained, often constrained by funding or staffing) undertaken to meet unique goals and objectives, typically to bring about beneficial change or added value. The temporary nature of projects stands in contrast with business as usual (or operations), which are repetitive, permanent or semi-permanent functional activities to produce products or services. In practice, the management of such distinct production approaches requires the development of distinct technical skills and management strategies.