VIDEO: What Is Project Management? Project Management Explained and Top Products

whether you know it or not there's a good chance that you already engage in some form of project management but what is project management are there ways that you could be approaching projects more efficiently what tools do project managers use keep watching for answers to all these questions and more hey project managers i'm meredith and today we're talking all about project management but if you want to learn even more be sure to check out our website at project management dot com for in-depth articles helpful tips and info about project management software we even have the link in description box below for you to go and easily click ever since there have been projects to do there have been people managing those projects and while it may seem obvious i think it's helpful to start explaining project management by defining what a project is you'll find different definitions of project around the internet so we wrote our own definition that we think offers a thorough summary here at project management.com we define a project as any attempt to create something new that has a clearly defined beginning and end a set of goals and a way to measure success so that's a project and the management part comes into play when we start looking at the challenges or limitations that we face when taking on these projects these can be anything from skills to workforce to budget to time to materials to well i think you get the idea sometimes these variables are within our control but a lot of times they're out of our control the goal of project management then is to focus on things that we can control to produce the outcome we want while also considering how the factors we can't control will impact our efforts here's a more formal definition project management is the practice of planning allocating and adjusting disposable resources to efficiently and sustainably achieve project goals cool so that's what project management is but there are many different methods or styles for effectively managing projects three of the most popular methods are agile waterfall and scrum while it's not a true methodology itself agile is a popular style of project management that originated in software development agile is based on the agile manifesto a list of values or principles for better software development and it includes a number of different methodologies that support these values agile emphasizes things like collaboration transparency and adaptability over silos and rigid plans which makes for a process of constant gradual improvement as projects move along following the success of this approach in places like silicon valley agile is now one of the most popular styles of project management in software development also popular in software development waterfall is a methodology that follows a structured concrete process waterfall emerged from the widespread adoption of gantt charts and is based on the idea that tasks should be completed linearly this methodology breaks projects down into seven different phases where the completion of each phase is dependent upon a completion of the previous phases taking this approach project managers tend to front load research and planning so that way work can be done efficiently and comprehensively in one phase waterfall still includes phases for testing and maintenance but it doesn't offer as much flexibility as agile methods which usually incorporate testing and maintenance into every project phase before i said that agile is not a methodology itself but rather a style of project management that includes a number of methodologies one of the most popular agile methodologies is called scrum unlike waterfall which follows a very linear process scrum is a fluid process based on one to two week intervals called sprints in general the scrum method consists of several events for planning providing updates on task completion and reviewing and revising work before starting the process over again the scrum methodology aims to help project managers deliver work faster with multiple opportunities to gather that feedback and make improvements along the way if project management sounds like juggling on a unicycle while playing dodgeball then i think you have the right idea thankfully there are a lot of variety of different project management software tools to help teams stay on track choosing the right project management software tool depends on your team's needs size and budget but some of the most popular project management systems are asana monday.com reich and smartsheet these are four products out of dozens so it's important that you take the time to consider your needs and research your options now that you've had a basic introduction to project management please visit our website at project management dot com to learn more about project management tips software recommendations and certification programs go and click on that link in the description box below to keep learning and be sure to 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This transcript was generated automatically from the video's captions and may contain errors.