Process Approach to Project Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4000 words

Process Approach to Project Management - Essay Example More and more executives realise that project management provides significant benefits for their businesses, for example such as those mentioned by Kerzner (2006: p.47): (1) â€Å"accomplishment of more work in less time, with fewer people†; (2) providing â€Å"better control of scope changes†; (3) making the organisation â€Å"more efficient and effective through better organisational behaviour principles†; (4) allowing â€Å"to work more closely with customers†; (5) providing â€Å"a means for solving problems†, (6) making â€Å"good company decisions† and (7) â€Å"delivering right solutions†. One can say that today project management is increasingly becoming one of the major organisational approaches in the government of enterprises. Numerous methods and managerial concepts have been proposed by PM researchers and practitioners in order to ensure effective management of projects. This paper is aimed to give an overview of the proce ss approach to project management, which represents one of the key methodologies of modern theory of project management. The remaining content of the paper is organised as follows. Section 3 introduces the main definitions and conceptions of project management theory and process approach in PM, among which the concepts of project life cycle, project stakeholders and project success are of a special importance. Section 4 discusses several issues related to the process approach in project management; the discussion is made on the basis of research of the state-of-the-art literature and real case studies analysis. The findings presented in section 4 are evaluated and the recommendations, made on the basis of evaluation, are offered in the section 5. The final section 6 provides a conclusion drawn from the study. 3.0 Introduction In 1959 Harvard Business Review published the article of Gaddis â€Å"The Project Manager†, in which a project was defined at the first time as â€Å"a n organization unit dedicated to the attainment of a goal — generally the successful completion of a developmental product on time, within budget, and in conformance with predetermined performance specifications† (Gaddis 1959: p.89). Since that, a project has been defined many times by many other scholars and organisations, for example: â€Å"A project is a temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique product or service. Temporary means that every project has a definite beginning and a definite end. Unique means that the product or service is different in some distinguishing way from all similar products or services† (PMI 1996: p.4). â€Å"A project is an organised endeavour aimed at accomplishing a specific, non-routine or low-volume task† (Salvendy 2001: p.1242). All definitions emphasise a project as a unique activity that has three distinctive characteristics: time (schedule, well-defined duration), cost (resources dedicated to achievement of goal s) and quality (desired outcome) defined by specification – â€Å"the nature and scope of what has to be achieved† (Harrison & Lock 2004: p.5). Demeulemeester and Herroelen (2002) mention another common element – a goal or objective of a project. Schwalbe (2010) makes an important addition that a project is always temporary and it always involves uncertainty. Soderlund (2004) agrees that the universal elements of a project are â€Å"uniqueness, task complexity and time-limitedness† (p.185). In addition, Gido & Clements (2009: p.6) assert that any project has a customer, which is â€Å"