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Hello. My name is Alan Zucker.
I am the curator of
the project management
principles programs for
Henry Steart Talks.
I have over 25 years of
experience managing projects and
project execution organizations
for Fortune 100 companies.
I live outside Washington DC
and teach at the University of
Georgia, University of Virginia,
the National Institutes
of Health and I also work
with several international
professional development
organizations.
In this session,
we will talk about
the foundational concepts
around project management.
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First off, what's a project?
So, the formal definition
of a project is that it's
a temporary endeavor undertaken
to create a unique product,
service, or result.
So temporary, a project
has to have a
beginning and an end.
It can't be ongoing.
We're also creating
something unique
so every project is different.
Every project has
different challenges.
If we're doing something
over and over again,
it's normal manufacturing
or maintenance.
If you're Apple and you're
creating a new iPhone
that new iPhone is
a project however
if you've rolled 100 or
1000 iPhones off the
production line,
it's no longer unique,
it's normal production.
So, projects also
create a product,
a service, or a result. A
product, something physical,
a road, a bridge, a highway.
Maybe writing a new book.
The most common example of
a service is consulting.
We're not creating
something tangible.
We are sharing our knowledge,
our information, our
skills with our clients.
An example of a result is where
we are trying to
achieve something,
where we're trying to achieve
an objective, quite often
better faster and cheaper.
We want to deliver
a better project,
we want to deliver service to
our customers more quickly.
We want to become
more profitable.
We want to have more
streamlined operations.
Results could also be
we're going to have
a reorganization
because we want to
enter into new territories or
we want to become
more agile or we just
want to improve how we execute
projects. What is
project management?
