What is a project? Projects are how innovations are tested and refined, before making huge investments of scarce resources. Increasingly, a company's implementation of professional project management is a benchmark for quality and value to shareholders. Company-wide implementation of project management best practice is a requirement for CMM-I Level III certification, increasingly a minimum qualification for Federal IT contracts. 
According to the Project Management Institute, a project is a work effort that has a definite beginning and ending date, a fixed budget, and that produces a new and unique outcome (either a service or a product). These attributes distinguish projects from programs (ongoing efforts to deliver a service) and production operations (ongoing effort to deliver a product). The state of the art of Project Management continues to evolve as more and more enterprises adopt this approach. The following outline shows the four major phases of project management, along with characteristic activities.

Project Initiating Phase. This first phase of project management lays the groundwork for successful execution. Initiating the project means identifying the information needed for management approval: a customer requirement (internal or external); a high level estimate of the resource requirements for the projects; and a high level estimate of the expected Return on Investment.  These elements comprise the Business Case for the project, which relates requirements to resource needs and demonstrates that the project will meet the company's revenue goals.
Planning the project is part of the Initiating phase. A good project plan includes a stakeholder communications plan, a project budget and schedule, a risk management plan, and a quality assurance plan. IT project plans also includes a configuration management plan. In planning, management confirms requirements with the customer and develops a conceptual approach to how the work will be structured, resourced and controlled. This conceptual approach often takes the form of Network diagrams and a Work Breakdown Structure.  These common planning outputs show the manager to determine which tasks may be performed sequentially or in parallel, and enable the PM to define the Critical Path, that sequence of tasks that results in the shortest completion time .  
Resourcing. Resourcing a project means identifying the manpower, equipment, and supplies needed to perform specific project tasks, and allocating them according to the Project Schedule.

Project Execution Phase.
Another way that project management differs from other types of management is that the Project Manager rarely has direct reports. Rather, the project team is composed of people from different functional areas who have the skills needed to perform the project work packages. The team members often continue to report directly to their general managers, and receive incentives (pay, performance appraisals, and bonuses) through the general manager.

Team Building. The task of the Project Manager is to build a high performing team from a collection of disparate people with differing functional skills. To a much greater extent than general or operations managers, project members must win the loyalty and inspire the dedication of the team to the common goals, as well as resolve conflicts between team members.

Managing Scope. Another More than half of all projects fail because stakeholders don't understand the interdependence of scope, schedule, and budget (resources). Sometimes called the Iron Triangle, the symbolism is appropriate because each of these variables is finite. If the scope (i.e., amount of work) increases, either the schedule must be extended or the project funding increased. Similarly, if the amount of time available for project rollout has to be moved forward, either the resource budget must increase or the scope of work must decrease.

Project Control Phase.

Earned Value Management (EVM) System. EVM is an project and program management tool that enables project managers to measure the expenditure of resources against the project's budget, schedule, and actual state of completion.  Essential features of any EVM implementation include a Work Breakdown Schedule that identifies and calendarizes work to be performed; an estimated value of the planned work (termed planned value, or PV), and pre-defined metrics used to quantify the accomplishment of work, called Earned Value (EV). EVM implementations for large or complex projects include many more features, such as indicators and forecasts of cost performance (over/under budget) and schedule performance (behind/ahead of schedule). The most basic requirement of an EVM system, however, is that it quantifies progress using PV and EV. Project tracking without EVM is inconclusive.

Activity Based Costing (ABC). ABC traces resource use at a variety of levels within the organization, and provides a reliable, quantitative method for tracing costs from resources through to specific products and customers (Cooper and Kaplan, 1998). ABC uses a two-stage method for analysis of costs. Stage One traces the use of resources to processes and activities. State Two assigns the costs of resources to products or services.
Unlike traditional costing systems that were intended to meet the financial information requirements of investors and creditors, ABC informs strategic decisions regarding the organization's operations and microeconomics (Cooper and Kaplan, 1998). It also enables organizations to gather the information needed to make better estimates of future project costs. In response to the Government Performance and Response Act of 1993, ABC is now being used by a variety of Federal agencies, including the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Department of Interior (DOI). ABC is the recommended cost capture approach for the DoD Working Capital Fund organizations.

Project Closure.
Lessons learned. "Those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it". This lesson lies at the heart of evidence-based management and all process improvement methods, yet many companies choose not to look at the 'good, bad, and ugly' of projects, beyond fixing blame for failed projects. Those organizations that do take the time to collect information and discuss what went well as well as what went badly are among the most successful, because they are learning organizations that improve over the long haul. Among the first government entities to adopt a learning culture was the United States Marine Corps, with its Marine Corps Lessons Learned System (MCLLS). More than any other, this system has enabled the Marines to retain their standing as the finest warfighting organization in the world, and to increase their lead over all others. Yet, at its most elemental level, MCLLS requires nothing more than one participant at a time writing four paragraphs about an observed event, and another person reading the paragraphs before participating in a similar event. Similar successes have been enjoyed by businesses like General Electric.

Sharing the glory and eating humble pie. All too often, project teams disband abruptly when the project ends, and the team members never get recognized for their contributions. Projects are team efforts, which means that the leader's success or failure depends on the actions of the individuals making up the team. Effective Project Managers make time within the project term to recognize the efforts of team members, and ensure that rewards are shared among ALL members of the team.

Projects that are managed professionally, using the Project Management body of knowledge, are completed on time and on budget, and result in an increase in corporate knowledge.  Business and Ecology Consulting's Professional Project Managers can train your employees, or help you plan, execute, and control your project.