Project management has a long
history. It has been around since the first humans banded together to hunt a
tough, and big, game. The Great Wall of China
and the Great Pyramids of Giza are two spectacular achievements of project
management that have been handed down to us from antiquity. In modern times,
the successful flight of first humans in space and the rise of modern
industries – from Ford to Samsung – have been possible because of project
managers, who can conduce a large number of individuals to work towards a
common goal – the fulfillment of a project.
Project management is at the
root of successful projects, that are defined in textbooks as temporary tasks
with well defined aims. A project can involve anything – from the construction
of the Suez Canal , to the launch of a new
product, and even the cooking of a dinner. A project is considered successful
if it achieves what it was set out to get without any time delay, or cost
overruns, or both. Project management is art that provides decision makers with
a set of tools to create successful projects. Poor management, as may be
expected, leads to failures; as the American IT industry shows.
The IT industry in the United States
Companies and individuals can
earn billions of dollars in savings if they do product management in a right
manner. Successful project managers understand their product and employ the
right tools. The tools that the Egyptian managers used were different from the
tools of the Han Chinese who were tasked with the construction of the Great
Wall. Both set of tools are different from modern web based project management tools, so much in vogue now, and for
a good reason.
The needs of modern project
managers are different from the requirements of the decision makers of a
generation ago. It is not considered out-of-the-norm if a manager has to manage
a team of individuals working across several cities. Egyptian papyrus is
certainly not a useful tool here, but a project
management software, especially a simple online project management tool, can do wonders.
The days when project
management was the exclusive domain of megalomaniac kings are, thankfully, past
us. Today, it is the businesses who are the primary consumers of project
management tools. In fact, a number of successful businesses are using the most
advanced of these tools to gain an edge. In the field of management, currently
the most advanced of them are web based
project management tools.
