02 Project Management

Project management enables using limited resources (time, funding, personnel, etc.) most effectively. The main tasks of project management include planning, organisation, leadership and monitoring the available resources.

In project management the most significant challenge is to achieve the overall project objective and the sub-objectives, to meet the deadlines and stay within budget. Project management comprises several processes that are linked together, since the result or product of one step is the input of the next one. The processes can be put into five groups:

• Initial process: Start with a project idea and the commitment to realise it.
• Planning process: Set up a work plan that must be met to reach the set objectives and activities.
• Implementation process: Coordination of human and financial resources to realise the action plan.
• Monitoring process: Observe (monitoring) and measure the set objectives; implement measures for improvement where necessary.
• Closure process: Conclude the project according to the work plan; evaluate.

The documents produced during the planning and implementation processes will provide information for the monitoring process and lead to the effective management of the project.

The logframe tool used during the planning process is later implemented in the monitoring process to compare and check the effective implementation of activities and use of resources in light of the action plan.

With long-term projects abroad it may be very important to take the local currency's inflation rate into account, since activity costs may vary accordingly.

The table below can be used to monitor the project costs:

Links:

Online library
http://managementhelp.org/

Quality development in prevention and health promotion "Quint-essenz"
http://www.quint-essenz.ch/en/project_management

Project Management T-Kit
http://youth-partnership-eu.coe.int/youth-partnership/documents/Publications/T_kits/3/tkit3.pdf

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