Project management is the discipline[1] of planning, organizing, and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives. It is often closely related to and sometimes conflated with program management.

The primary challenge of project management is to achieve all of the project goals[5] and objectives while honoring the preconceived project constraints

Project management approaches

There are a number of approaches to managing project activities including agile, interactive, incremental, and phased approaches.

Regardless of the methodology employed, careful consideration must be given to the overall project objectives, timeline, and cost, as well as the roles and responsibilities of all participants and stakeholders.
1.) The traditional approach
* Project initiation stage;
* Project planning or design stage;
* Project execution or production stage;
* Project monitoring and controlling systems;
* Project completion stage.

2.) Critical Chain Project Management
Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) is a method of planning and managing projects that puts more emphasis on the resources (physical and human) needed in order to execute project tasks. It is an application of the Theory of Constraints (TOC) to projects. The goal is to increase the rate of throughput (or completion rates) of projects in an organization
3.) Extreme Project Management

In critical studies of Project Management, it has been noted that several of these fundamentally PERT-based models are not well suited for the multi-project company environment of today.[citation needed] Most of them are aimed at very large-scale, one-time, non-routine projects, and nowadays all kinds of management are expressed in terms of projects.
4.)Event chain methodology

Event chain methodology is another method that complements critical path method and critical chain project management methodologies.

Event chain methodology is an uncertainty modeling and schedule network analysis technique that is focused on identifying and managing events and event chains that affect project schedules. Event chain methodology helps to mitigate the negative impact of psychological heuristics and biases, as well as to allow for easy modeling of uncertainties in the project schedules. Event chain methodology is based on the following principles.

5.) PRINCE2
6.) Process-based management
Capability Maturity Model, predecessor of the CMMI Model

Also furthering the concept of project control is the incorporation of process-based management. This area has been driven by the use of Maturity models such as the CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) and ISO/IEC15504 (SPICE - Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination).

International standards

There have been several attempts to develop Project Management standards, such as:

* Capability Maturity Model from the Software Engineering Institute.
* GAPPS, Global Alliance for Project Performance Standards- an open source standard describing COMPETENCIES for project and program managers.[20]
* A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge
* HERMES method, Swiss general project management method, selected for use in Luxembourg and international organisations.
* The ISO standards ISO 9000, a family of standards for quality management systems, and the ISO 10006:2003, for Quality management systems and guidelines for quality management in projects.
* PRINCE2, PRojects IN Controlled Environments.
* Team Software Process (TSP) from the Software Engineering Institute.
* Total Cost Management Framework, AACE International's Methodology for Integrated Portfolio, Program and Project Management)
* V-Modell, an original systems development method.