Hello, my name is Bill Raymond, and
welcome to this Microsoft Project Fundamentals Course.
With over 15 years working with Microsoft Project,
I provide you with the guidance and best practices to help you get started.
In this lesson, you're going to learn the basics of project management, and
in future lessons, I will focus on using Microsoft Project.
Before we begin talking about project management,
you might be wondering how much you need to know about Microsoft Project.
As you can see in the figure,
the good news is you will never have had to use Microsoft Project before.
I have taught hundreds of people how to use Microsoft Project, and
I offer you this advice.
The worst thing you can do is attempt to use so many features in the tool that
the tool starts managing you, and you lose focus of managing your team.
Good luck, and I hope you enjoy this introduction to project management and
the remainder of the Microsoft Project Fundamentals course.
Whether you are building the tallest skyscraper or
creating the next great software application, you are managing projects.
All projects start with the strategy.
As a project manager, you coordinate a diverse group of people.
These people in turn have a diverse set of backgrounds and disciplines.
Software developers may use an Agile approach to managing their work,
where product managers might use a Stage Gate methodology to bring new
products to market.
As you can see in the figure, project management
takes the form of an overarching process to deliver on a particular strategy.
There is a global organization called the Project Management Institute, or PMI.
In their publication, the Project Management Body of Knowledge,
also referred to as the PMBOK,
you will find an often used definition of a project, which is as follows.
A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or
service.
As you can see in the figure, all projects have a planned start and finish date.
Projects are significant efforts to meet a certain objective.
Projects are not maintenance or other business as usual activities.
As the figure illustrates, building a house is definitely a project.
While it may seem that sweeping the floors, cleaning the windows,
and maintaining the house is a project,
it is really not something that we would consider a formal project.
If we're designing a new software product, that's definitely a project.
If we're just fixing bugs in that software product, that's likely not a project.
Again, if we're building a new product,
then we're going to release that to market and that's definitely a project.
If we're just providing customer support for that product,
that's again another maintenance-style activity and not a project.
In conclusion,
remember that your role as a project manager is to deliver on a strategy.
You will work with a team to define the project,
such that it has a clearly defined plan from start to finish.