What Is the Meaning and Use of Project Management?

What project managementProject management means seems to be familiar at the first glance: Performing the tasksTasks of initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and terminating projectsProjects. At the second glance, however, the question arises in repeatedly in specific cases whether a particular operation should be defined and organized as a “project Projects ”, as a “task Tasks ” or as a “case”. This is because each category involves different management Managements efforts. For this reason, the notion of a project Projects will firstly be critically examined (Sect. 2.1). Based on this definition, the tasksTasks of project managementProject management, as codified in norms and standards, will be summarized (Sect. 2.2). Of particular interest for the topic of this book is the question, how effective these norms and standards are for ensuring the success of projectsProjects (Sect. 2.3) and where sources of wasteWaste in project managementProject management may be located (Sect. 2.4). This perspective yields starting points for “streamlining” project managementProject management as proposed in “agile Agiles approaches” (Sect. 2.5). Said approaches will then be critically reviewed with regard to their contributions and limitations for minimizing wasteWaste in project managementProject management. This point of view underlines the position of the author that “leanLean” and “agile Agiles ” project managementProject management are not necessarily congruent. Rather, “Lean Project ManagementLean project management” is positioned here as an approach that offers potential for reducing wasteWaste in both, “classic” and “agile Agiles ” project managementProject management approaches.