Project management is the management of projects. It is true that the big projects are found in big companies and it is also true that most people go to study project management and get certified as project management professionals do it in order to get jobs in such companies. Project management is a general skill. Projects can be anything from software projects to building a building. Projects can be long or short expensive or cheap. There are common aspects to managing any project. Basically project management is really the management of resources the tracking of progress and the decision making during that process in order to make the right compromises that will bring the project to a successful end.



But projects are found not only in big or small companies. In fact many things that we do in our private lives are projects as well although most of us do not think of them as such and do not treat or manage them as projects. There are endless examples to such projects. For example assume that you have decided to buy a new television. Although you might not treat it as a project in fact it is. You have limited resources which are your budget the time you have to spend on the project and your ability to shop in a certain distance from your home or maybe shop online. You have a deadline maybe you did not set a specific date for it but more likely than not you have an idea of when is the latest you want to get that television. You might have other human resources that you need to use for example maybe you have friends you would like to get ideas and information from or maybe you need to find someone to help you with hauling the television. If you have an old television you might need to sell it before the new television arrives which is something else to coordinate.

Treating your private projects like buying a new television as a project that needs to be managed might sounds like an overhead that is not needed. But in fact reality shows that managing even such small projects results in savings in time money and frustration. Spending a short time writing down a plan for your buying a new television project putting a schedule listing the resources and having milestones to make sure you are on track will end up saving more than you would spend on such preparation. It is proven that managing that project will result in you getting the new television faster and cheaper. This should be intuitively understood by people since why what is right for big companies projects would not be true for smaller home projects? One thing that is different is that home private projects can be managed more loosely. You do not need to take a class in project management for such projects. Applying common sense and just being more diligent about your plans and actions is enough.