Why use a Project Management Method?
Project failures are all too common some make the headlines, the vast majority are quickly forgotten. The reasons for failure are wide and varied. Some common causes are:
- lack of co-ordination of resources and activities
- lack of communication with interested parties, leading to products being delivered which are not what the Customer wanted
- poor estimation of duration and costs, leading to projects taking more time and costing more money than expected
- insufficient measurables
- inadequate planning of resources, activities, and scheduling
- lack of control over progress so that projects do not reveal their exact status until too late
- lack of quality control, resulting in the delivery of products that are unacceptable or unusable.
Without a project management method, those who commission a project, those who manage it and those who work on it will have different ideas about how things should be organised and when the different aspects of the project will be completed. Those involved will not be clear about how much responsibility, authority and accountability they have, and as a result, there will often be confusion surrounding the project. Without a project management method, projects are rarely completed on time and within acceptable cost this is especially true of large projects.
A good project management method will guide the project through a controlled, well-managed, visible set of activities to achieve the desired results. A project management methodology such as PRINCE adopts the principles of good project management to avoid the problems identified above and so helps to achieve successful projects. These principles are:
- a project is a finite process with a definite start and end
- projects always need to be managed in order to be successful