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| Project management is the
discipline of planning, organizing, and managing resources to bring about
the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives. It is
often closely related to and sometimes conflated with program management. |
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| A project is a temporary endeavour,
having a defined beginning and end (usually constrained by date, but can be
by funding or deliverables) undertaken to meet particular goals and
objectives, usually to bring about beneficial change or added value. The
temporary nature of projects stands in contrast to business as usual (or
operations), which are repetitive, permanent or semi-permanent functional
work to produce products or services. In practice, the management of these
two systems is often found to be quite different, and as such requires the
development of distinct technical skills and the adoption of separate
management. |
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| The primary challenge of project
management is to achieve all of the project goals and objectives while
honouring the preconceived project constraints. Typical constraints are
scope, time, and budget. The secondary—and more ambitious—challenge is to
optimize the allocation and integration of inputs necessary to meet
pre-defined objectives. |