SST101: There is without a doubt that project management is integral to the successful economic growth of any organization: Principles of Project Management Assignment, SUSS, Singapore

There is without a doubt that project management is integral to the successful economic growth of any organization. In fact, in so many aspects of our lives, we are actually using project management without even realizing that we are. Whether it is organizing a picnic for a friend’s birthday or building a kennel for our dog, we all use project management every day.

The project management processes of initiating, planning, executing, and monitoring together with controlling as well as closing a project, while seemingly simple require a carefully thought-out process. Poor project management can lead to disastrous results and hundreds of millions of dollars in project losses.

Most people who are involved in project management may not be addressed as a “project manager”. They could be scientists, engineers, administrators, business executives, legal counsels, and government officials whose success depends upon being able to lead and manage project work effectively.

While for some professions, project work occupies a larger percentage of their job scope, such as events for an event coordinator, or renovations for a contractor; for other professions, while the project scope might be small, it might still constitute a crucial part of their work. For example, a senior sales manager might be asked to lead a project to expand a new product line into a country. Hence, project management is integral to almost every occupation, and it is a transferable skill set with universal fundamental principles.

For the purpose of this course, we will also assume that this is your first foray into the discipline of Project Management. It is with this in mind that, we will mainly concentrate on building an understanding of what project management is, what it is meant to do, and explore its opportunities as well as critique its purpose.

Together with the prescribed textbook “Project Management – The Managerial Process (Sixth Edition)” by Eric W. Larson and Clifford F. Gray, this course will introduce you to the fundamentals of project management and serve as a launching pad for you to explore each aspect of project management in greater detail from other advanced courses.

With regard to this Study Unit 1, we will focus on getting an understanding of the overall structure of the course. We will uncover the need for project management as well as the various project management career paths. We will understand how an organization’s project management is aligned with its business strategy and how both the organisation’s strategy and project management relate to each other.