Project Management Methodologies: How to Create Yours

GOAL: Task-oriented Procedures Versus Timelines and Deadlines

As you may notice, the majority of project management books break up the planning process into chunks of time in meeting deadlines. Granted events move in a linear fashion time-wise, but there are also other ways to skin a cat.

Especially since every project is different in terms of goals, scope and team members carrying out various activities, I’m suggesting other creative ways to eat an elephant. Such as, planning activities along task-oriented procedures.

This way, you can envision eating an elephant in bite-sized morsels that you can digest, at your own pace, as you face different tasks and derive fulfillment in accomplishing them. Taken as a whole, a task-oriented methodology is more easily accommodated and accountable to complete.

By definition, the term “methodology” insists that you lay out a plan to accomplish your project goals—from thinking through actions and steps with a clear order, and how precisely scarce resources (human and capital) will be utilized to realize bottom line value.

This is at the very heart of project management—the ability to devise a workable plan that defines project goals while specifying exactly (with what activities) how these goals will be met, and who would be involved with each task, and within a particular time frame.

There are many approaches managers use—project-based management, critical chain project management (CCPM) or extreme project management (XPM), to name a few.

However, determining which approach to use will always cover five basic stages of any project management:

1. Define
2. Plan
3. Execute
4. Monitor
5. Closure or completion

That’s why I encourage you to create your own methodologies in working through these five stages, with each requiring different scenarios and tasks.

I fully believe success is leveraged through individual initiative—by taking innovative steps outside the box, and beyond. (BTW, this is how trailblazers and pioneers accomplish breakout innovations and achievements.)

BIO: A corporate executive and entrepreneur, Angela Brister is the author of When Life Hands You A Project, Manage It! Visit http://www.projectmanageit.com/ for more online project management ideas. You're welcome to quote from this article and credit the source to Angela Brister at: http://projectmanageit.blogspot.com/.