Definition of Project Management

Project management is the combination of people, processes, techniques, and technologies necessary to bring the project (or program) to successful completion. Measures of success depend on the particular project. However, most projects are measured on what may now be considered the quadruple constraint of:

• Time (schedules);

• Cost (on or over budget);

• Performance (based on specifications);

• Quality (meeting or exceeding customer expectations in the intended use environment).

The Old Project Management Role

Historically, the project manager's role was to plan, control, organize, and direct the work of several individuals or departments so the project could succeed.

The New Skills Required of a Project Manager

Today the project manager is expected to be:

• Better educated;

• Open, friendly, and people-oriented;

• A better listener;

• Quality conscious;

• Receptive to new ideas;

• More participative;

• Facilitators;

• Skilled at group process and group dynamics;

• Encouraging to others to participate in plans and decisions;

• Understanding in how to coach, inspire, and motivate;

• Able to span boundaries;

• Able to provide and apply integrative management techniques to unique, complex organizational ventures characterized by interdependent efforts, a variety of specialists, over multiple sites, multiple languages, and multiple cultures.

The process areas of CMMI certainly expound on the project planning and project monitoring and control functions that make up the basics of project management, but the concerns of the project manager are scattered among many process areas in multiple categories in CMMI . We will examine a reasonable subset of them here.

Estimation

Estimation is still a critical...