Forty to fifty years ago, we began to see project management as we know it today. At the start of the 1960s, manufacturing and financial companies realized tasks could be more efficiently organized into projects. They saw how important it was for various departments and professions to collaborate. That was the true beginning of project management.
In late 19th century, due to the rising complexities of the business world, it evolved more effectively from management principles. Large-scale government projects played a big role in major decision making. They were called as management decisions. Big projects involved thousands of workers, huge quantity of materials and bulk quantity of machinery and equipment.
Business organizations wanted to apply some powerful techniques so that the labor, material, and machinery were effectively used to give maximum results. In early 20th century, Frederick Taylor analyzed work patterns and behavior and found out that better methods can increase the productivity considerably. This type of analysis is now known as time and motion study. Time and motion can suggest better methods to reduce labor and material costs. Taylor was dubbed the "father of scientific management".
Innovator of the charts which bear his name, Henry Gantt studied the order of work operations in great detail. His studies of the progress made on large progress helped him introduce the charts in the 1920s. The chart helped by allowing workers to see the scheduled times and the dependencies for each task. Gantt charts are still in use today.
Several crucial innovators along with Taylor and Gantt, made management into a specific business function where discipline and study are necessary. Later, other areas such as industrial psychology, marketing approaches and human relations were seen as the integral parts of business management. Critical Paths Methods and PERT charts became part of management in the middle of 20th century. Several organizations, and the military as well, started using these methods after observing their benefits. They remain in place even at present.
Project management today has a different shape than at the onset. It now views a business as a human organism. Therefore, it implies that in order for a business to survive and prosper, all of its functional parts should work in concert toward specific goals, or projects. In the following decades, it began to evolve into modern forms which are prevailing now all over the world. The general concept is a project is managed by a project manager who has overarching responsibility for its accomplishment. The project manager assembles the necessary team. He organizes and co-ordinates the whole show to get optimal results in terms of productivity and profits and, ultimately, deliver the project to completion - on time and on budget.
Article Source: http://www.orbitaloc.com/
Daiv Russell is a marketing and management consultant with Envision Consulting in Tampa, Florida. Consult these resources to learn more about Project Management Basics, Choosing an Online Project Management Course, and How to draw a Gantt Diagram.
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