PMI traditional project management

(upbeat music) - Good project managers are jacks of all trades and masters of none, at least in the traditional sense, however, when you dig a little deeper, you see that project managers are masters of something, integration management. It's quite possibly the most important role project managers play. Imagine a group of disconnected team members trying to complete project deliverables, but they lack clear direction, communication, alignment and change control. Does this sound like project bliss to you? Without integration management there would be pure chaos on projects. - Have you ever had a jam-packed day of errands and appointments, you probably made a list of everything you needed to do, maybe even put your to do's in order, so you could complete them as efficiently as possible. A project schedule does the same sort of thing. It includes all the work that has to be done, who does the work, and the sequence in which it's performed. - Scope creep is the bane of project managers' existence the world over. If you've ever added work to your project without accounting for it in your scheduling budget, you've been a victim of scope creep. Another way of looking at it is, scope creep requires you to do more work the same amount of time and money as you originally estimated. You see how this could be a problem? Although it may be tempting, scope creep should never be allowed, if for no other reason than it's bad project management practice, to lose control of any of your project constraints, particularly scope. - The project budget is the tool to ensure that your spending doesn't exceed your funding limits. Here are my suggestions for creating a project budget: First, focus on the triple constraints, the schedule, the scope and the costs. Second, think about your project from start to finish. Third, look at your major expenditures, the typical budget specifies costs for labor, materials, cost of financing, and other costs such as travel and communications. Fourth, discuss contingency dollars with your sponsor, it's important to have contingency funds set aside to handle the unexpected. Lastly, consider the information you'll need to support the cost and benefit data for the project. Keeping this in mind can help you manage expectations with your sponsor and key stakeholders.