The City and State
The Role of Project Management in Today’s Business Environment
The term project refers an individual or collective endeavor for achieving planned objectives in the form of output, profits, or products. Project Management systematically plans the tasks in hand to get desired aims. It provides project owners set of tools for planning, implementing, and executing specific activities to meet organizational objectives . In modern day business environment, project management is focused on results-oriented management style for establishing collaborative relationships among a wide range of characters (Gray, 2011).
The project management is not restricted to limited industries and business practices like construction, defense, and consultation. It is part and parcel of all modern businesses. The major impact of project management could be explored in electronics industry related to manufacturing of latest versions of mobile hardware and software products to meet growing IT requirements. Owing to its importance in modern day business world, the management in any organization considers it as their prime responsibility.
The skills and attributes of project management are universal and applicable in virtually every business. You can use the generalized project management procedure and methodology for developing new products in mobile industry, exploring new energy resources, organizing various events, and so on (Gray, 2011). As people switch-over their jobs, their project management skills are utilized in their new environment and their talent is polished further (Gray, 2011).
Considering the significance of project management in today’s business, it is included as a core subject in most of the higher education disciplines. Only a few years back, it was taught only to specific engineering students. Nowadays, most of the reputed universities offer multiple sections of project management courses for students of business, finance, engineering, Management Information Systems (MIS), Health Sciences, and many other disciplines (Gray, 2011).
The project management is not merely a special flavor added to the business processes. It has become a requirement instead. Standard businesses are spending most of their efforts in managing their projects for achieving organizational goals and objectives. As the time is moving further forward, we will see increased contribution of project management towards strategic planning and development of businesses due to the reasons of knowledge explosion, product life cycle compression, corporate downsizing, and increased focus on customer satisfaction (Gray, 2011).
Owing to rapidly changing and innovating marketing conditions, the businesses need to manage a lot of projects to stay in competition with leading enterprises. Project management at a large scale needs a sophisticated governance model. The leading businesses like Google Inc. Apple Inc. implement over 1000 projects every year around the globe. In order to manage such as huge number of projects, centralization of project governance is the only solution. Centralization means integration of all project management modules and processes at all levels of business processes (Gray, 2011). Such a project driven environment makes business performance and outputs improve at a rapid rate.
The soul of project management is aligned with the organizational objectives for better utilization of resources. The selection criteria of projects should be strict to ensure their valuable contribution in strategic planning and development of the organization. Most valuable projects should be finalized and managed properly. These projects become part of the company’s portfolio for which planning is required.
The role of project management in strategic management and planning is vital. It is required for transforming organizational strategy into new services, products, and processes required for success. Moreover, strategic goals must be aligned with projects in rapidly changing global competition. The top and middle management must play their crucial role in order to strengthen the link between organizational strategies and project planning (Gray, 2011). The management lies at the peak of strategy and operations. The modern day business requires transformation of management from operational perspective to strategic project planning (Gray, 2011).
The requirements of business operations are rapidly fluctuating around the globe. You will find plenty of innovations and changes in traditional industrial processes. In order to meet these changing business requirements, projects must be designed and developed accordingly . The project managers will take care of the progress of these projects and they will be guided by well-defined management processes .
The project management gives organization a “strategic power” as an attribute of the competitive advantage . The companies can use this strategic management to prevent competitors from taking lead in market conditions. In short, the importance of project management and planning is sky high in modern day business and market environment. The top management needs to manage their projects to meet demands of transformations and improve their traditional strategic planning to include flavors of project management.
References
Gray, 2011. Project Management 4E (Sie). India: McGraw-Hill Education Pvt Limited.
Ranf, D. E., 2011. Project Management-Then And Now. Annales Universitatis Apulensis: Series Oeconomica, pp. 596--603.
