Project Management for Professionals

Is a basic knowledge of project management only for certified project managers or those who hold a diploma? Not necessarily!

"You need to manage your laboratory the same way you do your science: boldly but methodically, with the right balance of purposefulness and opportunism."

Project management has evolved over the years. Today's project management is less an arcane technical discipline than a set of principles intended to provide a structured approach to making the everyday decisions that keep a business running, even a small business. Or a laboratory.

Project management begins, as it should, by defining its subject: A project, according to project management theory, is an activity with three characteristics:

Specific outcomes or results

Definite start and end dates

Established resource budgets

The Key Components of Project Management

Planning--clarifying:

Organizing--specifying roles and responsibilities for project personnel

Controlling the performance of project work

Key Premises That Lead to Project Success

Project management is a way of thinking and behaving, rather than just a way of analyzing and presenting data.

Attempting to control all aspects of a project assures the greatest chance of success, but you will never succeed at controlling everything. That's okay.

People, not numbers and graphs, create successful projects.

Continue reading ... Project Management for Scientists, Stanley E. Portny, Jim Austin, United States, 12 July 2002

See also my review:
Barbara Allan. Project Management: Tools and Techniques for Today's LIS Professional. FACET (imprint of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals). & Neal-Schuman Publishers, 2004. Information Processing and Management, (in press)