Simple Project Management: Basecamp

• Author: Dennis Kennedy - Tom Mighell
• Pages: 131-135

131

Simple Project

Management: Basecamp

The idea of project management has been around for some

time, but until recently it was relegated to fields such as con-

struction or engineering. As corporations began to appreciate

the value of project management, more and more adopted this

strategy and have improved efficiencies and profits as a result.

Certainly every Fortune 500 company has some sort of project

management department or structure, and there’s even a Proj-

ect Management Institute (http://www.pmi.org) with hundreds

of thousands of members.

Legal project management has been much slower to catch

on, but over the past four or five years, law firms (primarily the

larger firms) have really begun to use it as a way to keep track

of litigation, transactions, or other complicated client matters.

But before we go further—what is project management in the

first place, and why should lawyers care? A project is essen-

tially a temporary or short-term endeavor that requires a team

of individuals to achieve a particular result. A good manager is

necessary to the success of any project. Here are some basic

activities of a project manager:

n Establishing project objectives

n Identifying the steps needed to achieve those objectives

n Putting together a team who will work on the project

n Developing a project plan

n Setting deadlines for completion of the plan

n Reporting plan progress to team members

n Reviewing project results

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