What is a project? and how to manage it in a structured and effective way

I have reviewed essential project management concepts. Even with the rapid pace of Lean iterative improvement cycles, structured planning remains crucial.

A project is “A temporary endeavour with a unique goal, and usually a budget.”

The course goes into a lot of detail, some takeaways are:

Steps in project management lifecycle: Initiation, planning, scheduling, execution, monitoring and controlling process and performance, close the project.

Identify goals and set objectives with SMART criteria, to inform what needs to be achieved: Specific, Measurable, Achievable and Realistic objective, Time-related objectives.

There are two major philosophies: waterfall and agile. Both are valid depending on the project, however when content changes are needed, use agile. Agile life cycles:

Envision -> speculate, explore and adapt -> close

➡ Envision: what will be delivered, project goal, objectives, team and guidelines.

➡ Speculate: panning, action and result.

➡ Explore: build features, peer reviews, testing.

➡ Adapt: act on feedback, capture lessons learned.

Repeat, speculate and explore.

➡ Close: check, reconcile project financials, reassign team members, update.

At a personal level, what are the key skills for a project manager?

✅ Technical: building fine tuning schedule, gantt chart, measuring performance.

✅ Business expertise.

✅ Problem-solving, it never goes as expected.

✅ Interpersonal skills, managing people from different departments.

✅ Leadership, bring people forward.

Very refreshing seeing those topics again after 4 years of startup projects, since finishing university where project management was part of my degree. I could assess what techniques I applied and the many others I didn’t, big discussion topic about speed vs structure however you always need one!