"The price of a plan is implementation." A good plan
that is never implemented is no better than no plan; a mediocre
plan, well-implemented, may have more impact than a great plan
poorly implemented. As with everything in else in planning and
management, there is as much art as science to the process of
implementation. But there are some "tools" which have
been developed to make acquisition of the art at least a little
less painful.
Project management means arranging the project tasks--and their
resources (human and other)--in a sequence which facilitates their
completion. Often, this is done by setting "milestones"
to gauge one's progress. Sometimes, it is important not only to
accomplish the project, but to do so with the minimum resources
possible. Successful project management usually requires breaking
the project into component tasks, figuring out the order in which
the tasks must be completed, and assigning the necessary resources
to each task.
There are a number of tools for project management, from the Gantt
Chart to PERT Charts and the Critical Path Method. Peter Drucker
(Management, 1973) identifies all three of these as derived
from the work of Frederick Taylor's students around the time of
World War I. In the Taylorite tradition, the "analysis of
work" consisted of identification of all the activities
needed to generate a product, rational organization of
those activities to create the smoothest flow of work, analysis
of each activity to redesign it as efficiently as possible, and
integration of the various activities into the job. To
these four, Drucker adds a fifth step which he argues is the first--defining
the desired end product.