Project Management..What is it?

Yesterday I sat together with my project manager to prepare the project plan for the next 3 months and man, After brainstorming for 2 hours we got the brains out of our head. There are so many constraints and so many dependencies. And we have to delay working by 2 weeks just because of a thing which is not in our hands..

I used to think project management as allocating resources and asking them to work on a set of objectives. But, Project Management is not easy as it seems to be and more commonsense goes into managing projects and resources. Last week I Read Critical Chain by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and it was a compelling stuff. Everything portrayed in that is commonsense. It shows that how we are carried away by the flaws that were established some years or sometimes some decades ago.

It shows how to use common sense to manage the critical resources and improve overall performance of a production environment. The business side is mixed with the personal story of a business school professor who studies the critical chain and other things. Over all it made a good read. It shows how to manage projects where we have overlapping priorities for resources and dependencies. It is really a food for brain book.

I have experience in operations and maintenance and my mind is acute towards that. The numbers game and optimization in a manufacturing and supply chain environment interest me. So am thinking of concentrating on those functions in my future consulting career.