Project Management: Everything You Need to Know When Assessing Project Management Skills

Project Management

Project Management is the art and science of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling resources to achieve specific goals within a defined timeline. It's a critical competency in any sector that involves complex, multifaceted initiatives.

Understanding Project Management

Project Management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements. It's about making the best use of resources, managing relationships, and ensuring that projects are delivered successfully.

The Project Management Lifecycle

Initiation

The project begins with an idea or a need. During initiation, the project's value and feasibility are measured.

Planning

Comprehensive project planning outlines the project scope, resources, timeline, and budget. It includes setting goals, defining roles, and establishing performance metrics.

Execution

Project plans are put into action. Resources are allocated, teams are informed, and tasks are executed according to the project plan.

Monitoring and Controlling

Project managers track progress and make adjustments as needed to ensure that the project remains on track and within budget.

Closure

Upon project completion, deliverables are handed over, stakeholders are informed, lessons learned are documented, and resources are released.

Key Principles of Project Management

Clear Objectives: Defining what the project is expected to achieve.
Defined Scope: Understanding the boundaries of what the project will and will not include.
Project Scheduling: Developing a timeline for project tasks and milestones.
Resource Management: Allocating the necessary resources effectively.
Risk Management: Identifying potential risks and establishing mitigation strategies.
Stakeholder Communication: Keeping all parties informed and engaged.
Quality Control: Ensuring that project outputs meet the required standards.

Project Management Methodologies

Agile: A flexible, iterative approach often used in software development.
Waterfall: A linear and sequential approach where each phase must be completed before the next begins.
Prince2: A process-based method for effective project management.
Scrum: An agile framework for completing complex projects.
Lean: A methodology focused on delivering value with less work.

Project Management Tools

Modern project management often relies on software to track progress and manage tasks. Popular tools include:

Asana
Trello
Microsoft Project
JIRA
Basecamp

Project Management is an indispensable skill that transcends industries and sectors. Whether it's IT, construction, marketing, or healthcare, effective project management ensures that goals are met, budgets are maintained, and success is achieved.

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I was at WooliesX (Woolworths) and we used Alooba and it was a highly positive experience. We had a large number of candidates. At WooliesX, previously we were quite dependent on the designed test from the team leads. That was quite a manual process. We realised it would take too much time from us. The time saving is great. Even spending 15 minutes per candidate with a manual test would be huge - hours per week, but with Alooba we just see the numbers immediately.

Shen Liu, Logickube (Principal at Logickube)

We get a high flow of applicants, which leads to potentially longer lead times, causing delays in the pipelines which can lead to missing out on good candidates. Alooba supports both speed and quality. The speed to return to candidates gives us a competitive advantage. Alooba provides a higher level of confidence in the people coming through the pipeline with less time spent interviewing unqualified candidates.

Scott Crowe, Canva (Lead Recruiter - Data)

How can you accurately assess somebody's technical skills, like the same way across the board, right? We had devised a Tableau-based assessment. So it wasn't like a past/fail. It was kind of like, hey, what do they send us? Did they understand the data or the values that they're showing accurate? Where we'd say, hey, here's the credentials to access the data set. And it just wasn't really a scalable way to assess technical - just administering it, all of it was manual, but the whole process sucked!

Cole Brickley, Avicado (Director Data Science & Business Intelligence)

I wouldn't dream of hiring somebody in a technical role without doing that technical assessment because the number of times where I've had candidates either on paper on the CV, say, I'm a SQL expert or in an interview, saying, I'm brilliant at Excel, I'm brilliant at this. And you actually put them in front of a computer, say, do this task. And some people really struggle. So you have to have that technical assessment.

Mike Yates, The British Psychological Society (Head of Data & Analytics)

I was at WooliesX (Woolworths) and we used Alooba and it was a highly positive experience. We had a large number of candidates. At WooliesX, previously we were quite dependent on the designed test from the team leads. That was quite a manual process. We realised it would take too much time from us. The time saving is great. Even spending 15 minutes per candidate with a manual test would be huge - hours per week, but with Alooba we just see the numbers immediately.

Shen Liu, Logickube (Principal at Logickube)

We get a high flow of applicants, which leads to potentially longer lead times, causing delays in the pipelines which can lead to missing out on good candidates. Alooba supports both speed and quality. The speed to return to candidates gives us a competitive advantage. Alooba provides a higher level of confidence in the people coming through the pipeline with less time spent interviewing unqualified candidates.

Scott Crowe, Canva (Lead Recruiter - Data)

How can you accurately assess somebody's technical skills, like the same way across the board, right? We had devised a Tableau-based assessment. So it wasn't like a past/fail. It was kind of like, hey, what do they send us? Did they understand the data or the values that they're showing accurate? Where we'd say, hey, here's the credentials to access the data set. And it just wasn't really a scalable way to assess technical - just administering it, all of it was manual, but the whole process sucked!

Cole Brickley, Avicado (Director Data Science & Business Intelligence)

I wouldn't dream of hiring somebody in a technical role without doing that technical assessment because the number of times where I've had candidates either on paper on the CV, say, I'm a SQL expert or in an interview, saying, I'm brilliant at Excel, I'm brilliant at this. And you actually put them in front of a computer, say, do this task. And some people really struggle. So you have to have that technical assessment.

Mike Yates, The British Psychological Society (Head of Data & Analytics)

I was at WooliesX (Woolworths) and we used Alooba and it was a highly positive experience. We had a large number of candidates. At WooliesX, previously we were quite dependent on the designed test from the team leads. That was quite a manual process. We realised it would take too much time from us. The time saving is great. Even spending 15 minutes per candidate with a manual test would be huge - hours per week, but with Alooba we just see the numbers immediately.

Shen Liu, Logickube (Principal at Logickube)