When is "management" not a bad word?

Project management is a very interesting concept to me, because I operate professionally in world of projects that should be managed, and that technically have leaders, plans and desired outcomes; yet, somehow, there's never really any sense of project management happening. Management of individual employees, resources or processes, perhaps, but not an overall eye on plan and execution.

Perhaps it's a sign of career maturity that the steps and systems of project management as laid out in PMBOK are both comprehensible and appealing to me. I also appreciated the fact that the treatise began with a clear definition of what a project is - that a 'project' has certain characteristics (short duration, unique factors, a development arc, a specifically assembled team) that distinguish it from every other dang thing you do in the work day.

Unfortunately, I haven't left myself enough time in the semester to do the readings justice. I think it would behoove me to spend some time with the PMBOK (which I picture as a sort of gazelle every time I think the acronym). I did find a lot to think about in the article I reviewed for the assignment, which was a case study of projects and management in action.

This and the technology planning units presented me with some challenges, since I've always worked in environments where planning gets shortchanged, and leadership is present, but boundaries of responsibility are often fuzzy. In a sense, these subjects are much harder for me than configuring a server and constructing a database.