Whether you're new or experienced at project management it can be really useful to focus on the essential steps in the project management process. This article summarises these.

These are four essential steps in the project management process. These are project defining, project planning, project tracking and project communicating. Project defining covers setting goals and requirements. Project planning covers scheduling tasks, assigning resources and dealing with potential scheduling problems. Project tracking covers recording actual versus planned activities, and project communicating covers reporting to key interest groups. We'll now look at each of these steps in turn.

Defining the project

In this stage we set an overall project goal to be achieved within a certain timescale. We can also include resources to be used within an overall budget. Project goals are usually statements consisting of a verb, an object, a timescale and a cost. Examples might be "To create a sales system in six weeks using resources within a budget of £1,000", or "Build a new factory in three years within a budget of £2 million". Once an overall project goal is set, the goal can be subdivided into sub goals with sub goals representing different parts or phases of the project such as market research or development. Usually a project will have an overall goal and one or more sub goals to describe all parts of the project.

Planning the Project

Once project goals are defined, then next step is to define project tasks. A task describes the actual work to be carried out to achieve the goal and consists of the verb and object part of the goal. Sometimes a goal can be broken down into several tasks which describe all the steps required to achieve the goal. Tasks, like goals, can be organized in a hierarchy depending on the project complexity. You can create three types of tasks to do this - project summary task, summary task, and task.

A project summary task describes the overall project objective, for example "Create New Sales system" or "Build Factory". Summary tasks describe the objective for each part or phase of the project, such as "Prepare Marketing Plan" or "Create Project Publications".

Tasks describe the specific action, such as "Prepare Project Costing" or "Write Training Manual". As we develop the project plan, we develop a hierarchy of project tasks consisting of an overall project summary task, then specific project summary tasks for each part or phase of the project, then project tasks within each phase detailing the actions to be carried out to achieve the goal.

Once the tasks are created, we create a tasks schedule plan to include each tasks timescale. The traditional method of showing this is on a Gantt chart, which shows the plan as a schedule of linked tasks as bars on a calendar type display. Within the schedule tasks are linked in relationships or dependencies such that one tasks leads to another in a cause and effect relationship.

So for example when one task is finished on the plan, another is planned to start. So if the planned timescale of the first task is delayed then the start of the dependent task is also delayed.

Tasks can also be linked in parallel so when one task finishes two dependent tasks start. The key benefit of creating the project plan as a sequence of linked tasks on a Gantt chart is that the task interactions and timescale can be easily understood and adjusted if necessary. Once the task schedule has been created on the Gantt chart, project resources can be assigned to tasks. Examples of resources are people, rooms or equipment. Because resources are available at a particular cost to the project, once they are assigned to tasks, the project itself can be costed.

Tracking the project

Once the project schedule has been determined and agreed by all interested parties, we record the final agreed plan as a baseline. Once recorded, the baseline can be used as a yardstick against which we can log actual project progress. Then we record actual project progress against the baseline. Normally we record progress task by task, recording actual start and completion dates. We can then compare these to baseline start and completion dates, and create variance reports if necessary. Sometimes once the project is underway we might revise the project baseline if, for example, the actual is significantly different from the planned baseline, and then continue to track actual against the revised baseline.

Communicating with others

Different project interest groups will different information from the project, so an essential step in project management is to create users reports, which can be created at the start, during and at the end of the project. For example funding providers may want a report of actual costs versus planned costs, with any differences highlighted. Or a team manager might want a report showing how all staff are to be used on the project with a summary of the required hours per person.

Hopefully this article has given you a glimpse into the project management process. If you're interested in finding out more, why not consider attending a training course? This can be a really effective way to really boost your project management skills and deliver better projects.