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“If your project doesn’t work, look for the part that you didn’t think was important.” — Arthur Bloch

The definition of a project can be said to be a set of activities to achieve a result, with some specific parameters such as start date, end date and resources. Effective project management is the process of developing important and systematic data about all these parameters so that the decision making is more effective. Project management involves knowledge, skills, tools and techniques related to project activities to meet project requirements.

Professor Dr Rajagopal Dhar Chakraborti, Director, Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management, IISWBM, spoke to BE regarding the impor-tance of Project Management in today’s India. He said, “Providing necessary infrastructure support for India’s growing population is a great challenge. The Government of India announced several mega projects like Make in India, Digital India, and Smart Cities. Effective project management is critical to make the investment worthwhile. Projects work on time bound frames and managers need specialised skills to execute them on time. For specialised skills, project managers earn more too. In the U.S. in 2017, wages of project management-oriented workers were on average higher by around 82% as compared to the wages of non-project-oriented professionals. Project management contributes to GDP and shortage of project management talents could hinder economic growth. The survey by internationally famed Project Management Institute (PMI) indicates that in the next ten years, over two million jobs would be created for project management in India and China. The PMI study indicates that India might lose 23 billion US dollars if sufficient talent pool is not created on time. Given this backdrop, IISWBM, India’s first business school is seriously considering proposals for MBA in project management. We need co-operation from all concerned stake-holders.”

Vineet Kumar, Lead Consultant of Mumbai-based global information technology com-pany, 3i Infotech, told BE, “Project management plays a vital role in proper planning and execution of a project and to successfully accomplish a goal within a given time frame. We should create and monitor project methodology standards, provide advice and create an environment to support our project managers. Our customers are spending a significant amount on consulting, implementation and system integration. Hence, going forward, our constant engagements would be on how to improve the customer service and satisfaction, enhance employee productivity and shorten project timelines. We should start building assets that can help us align for this and proactively suggest best practices based on what we have learnt from projects with other clients. We need to package our existing thought process that can help bridge gaps between expectations and reality. We need to ensure that our project management capability helps minimise the risks, control costs, improve speed to market and make substantial improvements in our margins.”