What is Project Managment?

Project management is a carefully planned and organized effort to accomplish a specific project, implementation, or execution that meets and exceeds a defined set of goals and objectives.

Project management follows clearly defined phases to help meet these goals and objectives, and tracks the progress of these phases along a timeline. In accordance with the tracking of the timeline for completeing these phases and tasks, costs, resources, and materials are also tracked.

When implementing a project, the most common phases can be broken down into
1) Research or Useasibility studies (Discovery Phase)
2) Project Scope definition (Definition Phase)
3) Project planning, timing, resources, costs and materials estimations (Definition Phase)
4) Project Design (Design Phase)
5) Project Implementation or Development (Development Phase)
6) Project evaluation, review, or testing (QA Phase)
7) Project launch (Launch)
8) Project support or maintenance (Maintenance Phase)

For example, construct a building, implement a new computer system, or build a website. Project management includes developing a project scope, which includes defining project goals and objectives, developing out a project plan, specifying tasks or how goals will be achieved, what resources are need, and associating budgets and timelines for completion.

It also includes implementing the project plan, along with careful controls to stay within scope of the project, or on the "critical path. A project manager ensures the plan is being managed according to plan, objectives, and scope.