A Project Management Methodology for Multimedia Projects

This paper tries to define a concept for managing multimedia projects efficiently and takes the suitability of existing methods into account.
Developing a valid solution makes it necessary to look at project management as a generic discipline first and then apply the results to the multimedia discipline. Only then can we be sure that no important aspects of project management have been forgotten, nor that existing and working strategies, which could be applied to multimedia projects, have been ignored. This paper therefore defines project management and generally describes its areas of responsibility. The question of whether project management is necessary and beneficial needs to be addressed as well. After project management and the necessity to actively apply it in some form has been understood in general, a specific focus on the existing information for multimedia project management will be undertaken. It will become apparent that different viewpoints exist as to whether multimedia project management should apply project management methods of related industry areas, such as software development. This will justify the need to compare multimedia projects with software development projects. After having gained an insight into project management as well as the characteristics of multimedia projects, it is possible to determine the demands that a project management method needs to be able to meet, to successfully manage multimedia projects. It would be beyond the scope of this thesis to analyse every existing method. Instead, one method will be analysed as an example. The useful aspects of the analysed method will be identified along with its shortfalls in relation to multimedia development. Finally, recommendations on how the shortfalls could be corrected will be made, so that a project manager will be able to use the examined method, specifically suited to multimedia projects.