Welcome to our whiteboard session today on what is project management seems like a crazy question to ask but if you see some of the questions out on the Forum and in some of the discussions we have with some of our clients. It’s easy to understand how it gets confused because project management sometimes is defined in our corporate environments or other environments and different.

Is that are I don’t know gathered all around the world. So you know me. I like to start with the clear definition to start things out right so my normal reference is Google. You’ll always see me say go to Google to research something to look something up to my reference today is from a guide It’s a guy from project manager a guide to the project management body of knowledge. It’s the fourth edition by PMI the project management.

Toot so you may have other references that you want to seek out, but this is mine for today. So the pmbok guide or a guide to the project management body of knowledge fourth edition by p.m. Isis. What about what project management is is the application of knowledge skills tools and techniques to the project activities to meet project requirements. So if we look at this graphically we have project activities that are going on.

And then we’re producing the project requirements the scope the deliverables and then so we’re inputting in our knowledge is the project manager knowledge or skills different tools. We use different techniques.

Those are applied against the project activities. There’s some kind of application process going on a lot of different things going to produce these requirements, so I want to break down some of these terms to because people use them interchangeably so want to be clear on what these are because a lot of times

you’ll see mention of these different words different references different lists the top skills the top tools that are needed. So let’s get clear on the different components because I believe and we have project manager believe it’s a combination of all four of these so knowledge now if you go to my good friend Google and search what knowledge means you can see a lot of different references you can pull up the pages and pages of what this

This is my favorite one that came up. So knowledge is what is known in a particular field. It’s line through education. So most of us are doing projects for specific Industries, and because we do projects for maybe specific Industries, we have a background knowledge. We’ve had a experience and we’ve had different education on our industry whether it’s health care whether its construction, it may be information. Biology, it may be green projects. It could be aeronautical it could be anything. So the knowledge is what’s known in a particular field. So the skills required are a particular. It’s a particular skill is a particular ability. It’s our expertise its ability to do something. Well, it’s a rising from either a talent that we have a training or even practice so our skills that we have in project management.

see some of our other whiteboard sessions on some of the top skills required, but in order to hone those skills more effectively we need training and it’s practice just like any other sports figures or four artists are for me other people to hone your skills or the make them better. It’s constantly learning.

It’s constantly growing some of us have again an innate talent, but we take those talents and we continue improving them with with training and practice. also tools what is the tool? So this definition is what I pull because commonly we think of something tangible something tangible we can put in our hand so one of the definitions was a device or a device held in one’s hand or used to carry out a particular function. So some of the tools that we commonly use could be software. It could be a software tool something they we accessed by the internet or our desktop a toolkit.

An Excel spreadsheet it could be Microsoft Word. It could be different tools like that that we use to apply to our project. And the last one is a technique. It’s a way of carrying out a particular task. So we think of techniques we think of methodologies we think of processes. We think of Frameworks that are required.

So again, these four components are all used to contribute to towards the project activities and as you know, From being a project manager. It takes a lot to hone. These four components are knowledge or skills or tools and techniques. These are the things that we do it as a project manager to actually manage your projects more effectively. So this is what project management really is all about. So hope you get familiar with these four components and helped to develop them on your own.

a project manager.com we feel strongly about these four components and we built them into our tool. So if you’re looking for a tool to help you manage your projects more effectively than sign up for our software a project manager.com.