Project Management

Since the 1950s, the project management (PM) discipline has been applied as a practical and multidisciplinary approach to initiate, plan, execute, control, and complete the work of team over a specific period of time. Over the last few decades, this discipline has increasingly played a central role within the context of the execution of projects and has attempted to understand the main factors affecting successes and failures. In 1950, the Iron Triangle formula was developed, comprising costs, time, and quality and subsequently Turner’s pyramid model. Both these techniques have become the most influential parameters to measure the success of PM as a discipline. By the late 1990s, these standard theories were enriched by the “Project Management Body of Knowledge” (PMBOK Guide), in which projects were divided into different processes: initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing. The application of PM is well recognized in industries as well as in academic environments. The implementation of a PM process represents an essential tool for the success of the design development of new medical devices, due to the multidisciplinary team and a variety of tasks involved in the design.