Scheduling and Project Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Scheduling and Project Management - Essay Example (Duncan, 1996, pp.4-5) Project Management involves balancing a number of competing demands on time, cost, and quality, and meeting the expectations of various stakeholders. Although several aspects of project management such as PERT/CPM planning are unique to it, there are other areas that overlap with other functional areas of management such as organizational behaviour, financial forecasting, and contracting. (Duncan, 1996, p.8) In order to take care of these activities, project management needs an organization structure. The commonly employed organizational structures are functional, project, and matrix structures. Under functional structure, all similar functional activities such as finance or HR are grouped together under one common head. In a project specific structure, the project manager has different functional experts under her. Matrix structures are those in which there is dual control. Wal-Mart, being primarily a retail giant, is unlikely to have a purely project specific management structure. This means that the project manager will have to get things done through functional heads.