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Project management is considered as a method and a set of procedures based on adopted management principles used to plan, evaluate, and control work assignments in order to duly achieve the desired result, within the budget and in accordance with project requirements. This chapter contains the basic principles of project management, which should be taken into account when building an IT Enterprise Architecture. Any projects involving, affecting or depending on IT are IT projects. The “project” approach should be a guidance when planning, developing and implementing various IT architecture services.

Project management is a very broad topic, affecting and interwoven with various directions of activity, such as quality management, risk management, finance management, and so on. This chapter briefly describes the main aspects, methods and techniques of project management.

A project is a one-time, non-recurring activity or set of actions to be taken within specific term, and aimed at creating unique products, services, results or clearly defined goals. The signs of the project are:

•There is an exact start date. The key feature of the project is the “time component”, i.e. there is the beginning and end of the project.

•There is an exact finish date. Date of the estimated deadline for the project is to be set, but the finish date is fixed upon obtaining the final result or achieving the objectives of the project.

•The project result is unique. This is the second distinction between a project and a process or regular activity. “Unique” does not mean absolutely new for everyone, it can be unique for an organizer or team.

•The resources and budget are limited.

• The specific order of the assignments. It may imply temporary changes in the managerial breakdown and make it different from the one established in the organization.

Program differs from the project by a larger scale and possibility to consist of many projects. For example, an organization has a transition program to a centralized IT management system, which may include several separate projects.

An assignment or a set of assignments is a set of actions to be performed by one or several persons using a simple list defining a sequence of actions.