According to numerous websites, project management is…

• The discipline  of planning, organizing, and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives.  (Source: Wikipedia)
• The process by which projects are defined, planned, monitored, controlled and delivered such that the agreed benefits are realised. (Source: The Association for Project Management)
• The integration of all aspects of a project in order to ensure that the proper knowledge and resources are available when and where needed, and above all to ensure that the expected outcome is produced in a timely, cost-effective manner.  (Source: B-Net for Management news)

Where’s mention of the people who get things done?  Where are the teams?

My least favorite definitions are the ones I found that even boil down project management to the “leadership role” which plans, budgets, co-ordinates, monitors, and controls.

Projects don’t happen because of an individual, they happen because of a team.  Jacob and I believe that “leadership” is not a necessarily one thinking head who manages the rest of the people involved in a project, that diverse teams can come together with different backgrounds and come up with something better than one person brainstorming alone.

We’re saying project management is the way in which a team plans, organizes, and manages resources.  The project manager’s role is to facilitate, not to dictate.  Although it’s good to have one person managing things from the top-down to keep things moving toward a goal, it’s better to have people also managing from the ground-up working towards the same goal.

We’re banking our life savings on Fellowstream that this is project management’s future.

-Deborah Fike

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