Project Management is the discipline of planning, organizing, and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives. A project is a finite endeavor (having specific start and completion dates) undertaken to create a unique product or service which brings about beneficial change or added value. This finite characteristic of projects stands in sharp contrast to processes, or operations, which are permanent or semi-permanent functional work to repetitively produce the same product or service. In practice, the management of these two systems is often found to be quite different, and as such requires the development of distinct technical skills and the adoption of separate management philosophy, which is the subject of this article.

The primary challenge of project management is to achieve all of the project goals and objectives while adhering to classic project constraints—usually scope, quality, time and budget. The secondary—and more ambitious—challenge is to optimize the allocation and integration of inputs necessary to meet pre-defined objectives. A project is a carefully defined set of activities that use resources (money, people, materials, energy, space, provisions, communication, motivation, etc.) to achieve the project goals and objectives.

Where to learn
http://www.pmi.org
http://www.apm.org.uk
http://www.gatlineducation.com
http://www.pmg.ie
http://www.4pm.com
http://www.aipm.com.au
http://www3.open.ac.uk/courses/bin/p12.dll?C01M865
http://www.projectmanagementcertification.org/

Useful links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management
http://www.ictknowledgebase.org.uk/whyprojectmanagement
http://management.about.com/cs/projectmanagement/a/PM101.htm

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