What is a project? Steps to building a successful project

What is a project ? In today's business context, project development is an important skill that helps businesses achieve their goals and stay ahead of the curve. In the article below, 1C Vietnam will work with businesses to learn what a project is and the steps to successfully develop a project!

1. What is a project?

Project is an organizational activity and aims at the common goals of the enterprise. In other words, when setting any goals, the administrator needs to plan the implementation and effective solutions to complete them, this is the characteristic of the project.

In fact, the project will be completed based on 5 basic elements as follows:

• Time: This is the stage to implement the project. Each project has a different time budget, the start and end times are clearly defined, helping to ensure the project is completed on schedule.
• Budget: Is one of the key factors to decide the success or failure of a project. Helps projects operate effectively and serves the work during the project implementation process.
• Human resources: Are the subjects directly involved in the project.
• Operations Department: The project manager will be responsible for allocating work and planning the most optimal solutions to complete the project quickly.
• Outcome Description: This is a plan for the expected effectiveness of the project. This will help the implementation team have a more comprehensive and objective view of the goals to be achieved.

2. Some features of the project

Each business will have projects, corresponding to each specific characteristic. However, most projects will be expressed through the following 5 basic characteristics:

2.1 Product Creation

A product is the result of a project. When a product is created, it means that the project has achieved its goal and produced a specific, measurable result.

2.2 Have specific goals

Each project produces a specific result, but that result is not only the final result but also the implementation process. Setting clear goals helps businesses orient project activities and work accurately.

2.3 Complete work as a team

Teamwork is essential to quickly achieve project goals. Depending on the size of the project, the number of people involved will vary.

2.4 Resources are allocated appropriately

Project resources will include: Funding, staff, materials, etc. These resources are all allocated reasonably based on many different factors. In particular, human resources are considered the key resource in the project.

2.5 Limited Time

Typically, a project needs to have a certain duration, including a start and end date. Since a project is a temporary series of activities to create a product and the project organization will disband after achieving the initial goals, instead it will focus on restructuring to suit future goals.

3. Project Classification

Depending on the scale and form of business operations, projects will be divided into many different types. However, there are 3 main types of projects licensed by the State and applied to actual activities:

• Investment project: Is a type of project with specific plans for each item.
• Public-private partnership project: A type of project that combines private investors and state agencies.
• Public investment project: Is a type of project for economic, social, educational development...

And some other popular projects include:

• Research and development project: Is the initial stage of the production and service process.
• Information system project: Includes many elements responsible for collecting and processing information and data.
• Construction projects: Are proposals related to construction activities and expansion and renovation of works.
• Training Project: Carry out the required tasks, ensuring cost and completion time.
• Aid project: Is a project to develop charitable works.
• Contract Project: Includes products/services combined by businesses.

4. Steps to build a professional and effective project

To successfully complete a project and meet its targets, businesses need to have an appropriate structural and organizational approach. Each step plays an important role, ensuring that the project runs smoothly within the specified time. So what are the steps to set up a project ? Let's learn about the steps to build a professional and effective project with 1C Vietnam below:

4.1 Define detailed goals

Clearly defining objectives is the foundation of every successful project. This step involves extensive research and analysis so that the business understands the purpose of the project and the desired results.

By defining and documenting clear goals, managers can more easily establish a clear plan for the entire team. At the same time, defining the project scope also helps businesses avoid scope creep and ensures that the project stays focused on the main task.

4.2 Project planning

The implementation plan is considered the "backbone" of a successful project. Project planning helps teams clearly visualize the sequence of activities, schedules, and important destinations. This allows managers to effectively monitor project progress.

A complete project plan will include: Task analysis, details of who is responsible for each activity and the time required to complete it. Above all, risk assessment and contingency planning are indispensable tasks of a project, helping the team to address challenges and minimize the rate of unwanted failures.

4.3 Resource Allocation

Resource allocation is the assignment of team members with the necessary expertise to specific tasks, including their availability and workload. Resource allocation needs to be equitable to avoid overloading team members.

4.4 Risk assessment and management

Risk assessment and management is a continuous process that occurs throughout the project life cycle. This step involves identifying potential risks that could hinder the progress of the project, which could originate from changes in the market, technological failures, resource constraints, and unforeseen external factors. Accordingly, managers need to regularly monitor and evaluate the project situation to develop plans to quickly minimize risks. At the same time, it creates many potential opportunities that lead to positive results such as: Cost savings, process improvements, or innovative solutions.

4.5 Monitoring and controlling project performance

Finally, progress monitoring and control is important to ensure that the project stays on track and in line with the original plan. Regular project status meetings, progress reports, and KPIs are essential for effective project monitoring. This provides a real-time overview of the project, allowing managers to identify deviations from the plan and take timely corrective actions.

5. Popular project management methods

Project management methods are a series of practices, methods and techniques that help a project achieve its set goals. However, each method will have its own characteristics, as well as its own advantages and disadvantages. Managers need to understand clearly and know how to apply them to increase the success rate of the project. Below are 3 popular methods that many businesses choose today:

5.1 Agile

Agile is a flexible and iterative software development method that allows managers to adapt and respond to changing requirements. The goal of Agile is to encourage collaboration, frequent feedback, and continuous improvement. Therefore, Agile is well suited to projects with rapidly changing scopes and conditions.

5.2 Waterfall

Waterfall is the simplest and easiest project management method to implement. Waterfall follows a sequential approach, each phase of the project must be completed before moving on to the next phase. It can be seen that the Waterfall method is suitable for stable and well-defined projects.

5.3 Scrum

As a sub-management method of Agile, Scrum uses a specific template, including short development cycles. The Scrum method emphasizes cross-functional organization and cooperation to bring high value to the project. At the same time, projects will be divided into small, transparent parts, helping team members always clearly understand the tasks to be done.

6. 1C:ERP solution optimizes overall resources, supports effective project management

In addition to understanding what a project is, businesses can apply the 1C:ERP solution to support project planning, assigning tasks and evaluating results quickly. 1C Vietnam's 1C:ERP is one of the timely solutions, quickly updating project progress with the following outstanding features:

• Support businesses to optimize resources and automate operations, thereby helping businesses manage projects more optimally and effectively.
• There is a system available to report progress and employee performance in real time, and it also helps managers create management reports at any time and can be self-adjusted without knowing programming.
• Help businesses optimize services, promptly detect problems arising in the process of providing goods/services to customers and partners.
• The solution helps record edits, ensuring transparency in information and user action history.
• 1C:ERP supports optimizing operating costs, effectively controlling operational targets (KPIs) to achieve financial goals.

1C Vietnam has worked with managers to understand what a project is and how to build a successful project. By clearly defining project goals, planning and monitoring project progress, businesses will have a visual perspective to quickly achieve the set goals. In addition, do not forget to register for consultation and experience the 1C:ERP total resource management solution of 1C Vietnam right away via hotline: 0247.108.8887 to ensure the project implementation process goes smoothly and become a professional manager!