Project management as described Lewis (2000) can be as complex or as simple as one chooses to make it. At its most basic, project management consists of the planning, scheduling, and controlling of project activities to achieve performance, cost, and time or in objectives for a given scope of work while using resources efficiently and effectively. Small projects, said Van Vliet (2000), are often as difficult to manage larger projects, particularly when complex software development activities are involved.
A project is defined as "a temporary process, which has a clearly defined start and end time, a set of tasks, and a budget, that is developed to solve a well-define goal or objective (Project management overview, 2008, p. 1)." Leadership is an integral element in the success or failure of any project. At the same time, as noted by Lewis (2000), success project are those with team members whose skills and knowledge are congruent with the tasks that must be addressed in the completion of the project.
As described by Lewis (2000), project management moves a project from the planning stages through to completion and evaluation. It is a series of processes that actively engage the skills, knowledge, and expertise of an often broad assortment of actors. While a project manager may take the lead role in each and every one of these stages, the project manager as described by Lewis (2000) is but one of the individuals who must be held accountable for the overall outcome of the project. He or she is, however, the de facto leader of the entire process and must function as such.
The specific stages of a project tend to be delineated into five standard activity sets that tend at times to overlap. These phases are:
. Initiating processes in which a project proposal is
prepared and then approved by key actors within the
. Planning processes, during which objectives are defined and refined and the ac
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