Definition of Project Management

Project Management (Definition as per PMBOK): The application of Knowledge, Skills, Tools and Techniques to project activities to meet project requirements.
In other words it involves planning, organising, monitoring and controlling the project activities in order to accomplish the project requirements. Therefore the project manager has being responsible for accomplishing the project objectives. The project manager is like the conductor of an orchestra, making sure that each section plays its part at the right time, in the right way and also in sync of the whole.

Project Management is far more than just managing a project schedule as many people tend to think that project manager do, in actuality the project schedule is just one among many things involved in project management process. Managing a project involves:

There are 5 process groups in Project Management:

1. Identifying the requirements and establishing clear objectives
2. Managing competing priorities
3. Meeting Stakeholder expectation

The first point is self explanatory. Without identifying the requirements and establishing clear objectives, the project is likely to fail. The second managing competing priorities refer to different aspects of project management that were tend to compete with one another such as time, cost, scope and quality. You may be asked to increase your scope which would bring your project over budget or delayed. These aspects sacrifices result of the other. This is something called the Triple Constraint

The Triple Constraint includes scope, time and cost, when one of these three is effected the others also be effected. That's the reason planning is very important ingredient project management. The stakeholders are those who have a vested interest within the project and the project manager has responsibility to the stakeholders and to ensuring that their expectations has been met.