For example, let’s say you want to bake a cake. You have to plan when you are going to do it, how much time it will take, and decide if you have all the ingredients on hand. If not, you may have to include a trip to the store, or a visit to your neighbor, to gather what you need. There you have the essence of project management: a plan with a goal, a schedule, and resources to utilize.

In its simplest form, project management comes down to an exercise in threes, not twelve. Everyone who has ever read anything about project management knows about the three essentials (often referred to as the three legs a project stands on): schedule, budget and quality. These are your three variables. Change any one and you have to have a resultant change in one or both of the others. Think of them as a triangle. You can’t change the length of only one side of a triangle. You have to change at least two. A shorter schedule can cost more or lower the quality delivered. Cutting corners on quality can lower the cost or cut the time needed to do the work. Change the budget either way and it is easy to imagine the results.

There is another set of threes in project management, as I see things, and it is in this area that most books on the subject get so complicated. This is not to say that what they have to offer isn’t worthwhile or valuable, it is. At the same time it is also overwhelming to someone who has suddenly become a project manager through no other reason than doing his job well, and is now looking for guidance. This sort of “accidental” project manager (one who becomes a project manager by accident, not design) frequently finds himself lost in the minutiae of project management, unable to see the forest for the trees.

What is project management at its simplest form? Three things can sum it up:

1. Plan what you are going to do
2. Do what you have planned
3. Monitor what you do to see that it follows the plan

Sure, there is a lot more to it than that, but this is the essence and the rest is details. Too many times a project is started without a plan, leading to disaster. Does this sound familiar? “I don’t have time to make a plan, I’ve got to get started.” Also, people seldom go to the trouble of monitoring to see if they are meeting the plan, if they made one. This puts most if the project squarely in step 2 without a plan and with no monitoring, but with lots of minutiae. As Lewis Carroll said, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” If your only concern is the execution of the project, you probably would not use a plan, anyway, even if you took the time to make one.

Planning is absolutely essential to project management. Taking the time up front to make a plan reduces the time it takes to perform the project (trust me, it’s true) and monitoring how well you are following the plan helps the project run smoother and avoid surprises. Take these three steps and add as much detail as your project needs, but not more than it merits, and you will appreciate how easy it can be to manage a project “by the numbers.” Don’t get caught in the trap of thinking that there is a set formula you can learn for running a project, though, because every project is unique in its own way, and there are as many solutions to the correct way to manage a project as there are projects to be managed.