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Getting Everything Done Using Prince2 Qualification

There are so many advantages to good Project Management. A career in this profession will provide you with opportunities to really make a difference to an organisation's bottom line. The role is excellent for those who have good spatial skills, and enjoy working through tasks. However, good communication and leadership skills are also a benefit as PM involves a great deal of interaction with other people.

...Smoothly And Efficiently!

Companies today want everything to come in on time, at the right quality and within the original budget. To over-simplify, a plan has a start and end date, a list of tasks and a list of the resources needed. Then we need to add in all the real-life complexities that most projects have to deal with. Project Management is establishing itself not only as a professional career path, but also as a most effective way to control business.

There are various levels of qualifications and training, some of which require no prior knowledge or experience in industry. These range from the basic fundamentals of planning, goal-setting, budgeting and executing projects to advanced management techniques on the most complex of projects and programmes.

Tools And Techniques

Students will need to be introduced to the idioms used in Project Management. To gain an awareness of how projects differ from standard work activities, you'll need to recognise PM terms and techniques and their applications. Whichever training and certification you choose to take, you'll find similar principles are adhered to despite the different methods utilised.

A Recent Discipline?

Even in ancient times, project management was used as a tool for controlling resources and the workforce - though motivational techniques would have differed greatly! It could be said to go as far back as Vitruvius (thought by some to be the world's first known engineer) in the first century BC. In the early twentieth century, an American engineer called Henry Gantt produced his famous project management tool the Gantt Chart.

Around the same time the French engineer Henri Fayol developed 'Fayolism' - functions and principles for management. Fayol's five functions - namely planning, organising, commanding, co-ordinating and controlling have stood the test of time, though many have now replaced commanding and co-ordinating with leading.

The Beginnings Of PM As We Know It Today

Prior to the nineteen fifties, projects in the United States were largely managed on an informal basis - probably with a Gantt Chart but generally with ad-hoc tools and techniques. New methods had to be developed to deal with the complexities of building the Polaris Missile submarine programme.

The solution came in the form of a new network chart known as PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique). The Critical Path Method (another mathematical technique) was also developed around this time. Alongside scheduling projections came technology for engineering economics, cost estimating and cost management.

International Project Management Association (IPMA)

The IPMA was formed in Europe in the late 1960's. It brought together several PM associations from various different countries and now has members throughout the world. Member associations promote project management and provide information about trends and developments.

PMI

In 1969 the Project Management Institute was created in America to advance state-of-the-art project management. The globally acknowledged project management guide PMBOK was first published by PMI in 1996 (although the latest edition now contains major changes). It endeavours to provide standard fundamentals of PM that are applicable in the majority of cases. As it recognises 42 processes that come within five process groups and nine knowledge areas of PM, you could benefit greatly from the knowledge it contains. Courses are available which train students on the various facets of the PMBOK. Once trained, you will be ready to take the global standard PMI certifications, which come under the headings of Project Management Professional and Certified Associate of Project Management.

PRINCE2 (Derived from PROMPT and PRINCE)

PRINCE was introduced in the UK in 1989 as a government standard for IT project management. PRINCE2 is now aimed at all other types of projects as well. Project management is a complex discipline, and PRINCE2 attempts to provide guidance on how much of the process to apply. It has recently been updated to the 2009 version, so students of PRINCE2 will learn the latest techniques of this framework model. PRINCE2 is designed to reduce the impact when change is necessary in the commercial environment. It promotes consistency and re-usable assets. It leads to the efficient and economic use of management time.

Other training options include degrees that incorporate project management modules, and also of course pure project management degrees. Learning how to manage people has been found to be just as important as learning how to manage processes - the best courses will deal with both aspects. Start looking for training now - and get your personal project on track!