The significance of project management, the associated methodologies, and related disciplines in operations management, has become increasingly apparent to me throughout my professional experience. As a technology consultant, and while pursuing my Bachelor’s degree, I began to notice certain similarities among projects that we performed for clients. Meetings at different organizations covered the same topics; the steps and deliverables were virtually unchanged; and the same problems and questions were always presented. It wasn’t, however, until I completed a course in Project Management that I could formally identify the similarities, articulate why these trends were so prevalent and determine how to control them so we didn’t continue to reinvent the wheel.
Later, I accepted leadership of a task force created by a volunteer organization to market and manage an online community activity register. As the team met, certain steps of a sequence emerged (much as the standard project lifecycle model that I was still becoming acquainted with suggested) – before we could accomplish anything, a plan had to be developed; and before developing a plan, we had to identify our objectives. The progression repeated itself when I worked on a committee who was arranging an event to highlight economic development in our community. This event also taught me a lesson in gathering inputs from volunteer and donated resources, and then structuring them to meet critical requirements while prioritizing secondary considerations - another practical application of my undergraduate coursework.
Eventually, the idea of a standard progression and workflow models became obvious outside of specific projects. If a project could be managed more effectively using these methods, why couldn’t the same be true for operations? My time at a regional chemical manufacturer provided a holistic view of the processes required to operate a business, and the interdependencies that made them a system. Ideas such as continuous improvement and process design took the concepts of project management and shifted them to ongoing operations. It was also at this company that I learned the perils of neglecting to manage both projects and operations: lowered morale, decreased productivity, financial loss, inefficient systems and high employee turnover were just a few of the resulting symptoms.
The culmination of my experience, education and realizations was that techniques to plan, create, execute and improve products and processes are vitally important to business – both for their inherent ability to increase efficiency and optimize productivity, and for the sustainable competitive advantage that operational excellence provides. So that's the "why." Look to this blog for information and thoughts about project management.
