Keeping a Project on Track

Abstract

The topic of project management is often a contentious one (what a weird thing to fight about!). There’s usually little disagreement that projects need to be managed- a deadline and a budget have to be set, and something called scope needs to be addressed (scope is what you’re going to do in a project, like “redesign website X”). Beyond this, there is a great deal of back and forth about how things should proceed. The old-school (and some would say proven) method of project management relies on planning everything in advance and assigning dates (milestones) and people (resources) to each task. Everything is planned and documented in advance, stakeholder sign-off is obtained on the documentation, and then the project proceeds. At that point, a project manager makes sure everything stays on track. They move or add resources to the various tasks identified in order to make sure they stay on time.