Post 3 - Purpose of project management

We've spent some time on defining what project, program and portfolio management are as well as touching upon their relationship and differences.

I thought I'd write this short post to answer a question you may indeed be asking yourself; 

'What's the actual purpose of project management?'

Well, to answer this question, I'd like to ask you whether you've ever planned a trip whereby you had plans to achieve a certain target; maybe it was to see some places or buy some stuff and found yourself unable to do so due to a shortage in time or money?

If this is the case, then you may relate to project management.

Did you feel in that situation, that if you had planned ahead by looking into how long each activity you planned to do in your trip would've taken, or calculated the costs of what you wanted to buy in advance, you may have saved yourself time and money?  Did you feel the need to resolve issues like this in the future? Well, keep on reading then. You may probably be asking yourself the question below.

How does this relate to project management?

Well, if big projects are left without having strict planning for budgets, resources and completion time, then unlike the small inconvenience you may have faced by running out of time or money on your trip, companies could lose a lot of resources, time and millions in cash money.

What's the actual purpose of project management?

Project management was developed to predict and foresee any problems (of course a lot bigger than your trip issue) that may occur; manage and control these issues as well as the complex and diverse activities within projects. This is through extensive planning and co-ordination with the organisation and its entities.

Projects have a mutual point of trying to bring about their endeavours by coming up with ideas and activities that will be required.

This is where project management comes in to save the day and brings to life the organisations aims.

In the next post, we will discuss how project management fulfils its purpose foreseeing issues before they arise and fixing them.

Like always, feel free to comment and add your thoughts.