As we dive into the basic overviews of projects and project management, I encourage you to think about your prior experiences. While some of you might have an extensive background in project management, others this is all brand new. However, I can tell you that while you think you might not have managed a project, YOU HAVE! Have you ever planned a vacation, birthday party, or your kids social calendar? Well, that is project management at its finest. As you go through this course, think about an event that you have planned and tie that process to the learnings throughout the course.

Think about what made your event or project successful. An article I came across "The Importance of Project Management" (ActiveCollab (2022)) states four benefits of project management:

1. Saves time and Monday

2. Better interpersonal communication

3. Better decision-making

4. Higher success

To relate, as a personal event, regarding communication, I was planning a family reunion with members across the country. Communication was a huge component to keep everyone aware of the dates, times, where to stay, travel and agenda. Knowing how important communication is in the process if we did not set up a social media page for all of us to correspond, we would have had a very difficult time executing this vacation.