By-election is a project!

By definition, a project is a temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique product or service(result).The coming by-election in Kuala Terengganu meets the definition.Winning is everything!It is hard work all day,right from the nomination day until the end of election day.

My blog shall remain apolitical and here I am not talking about politics but about the project management aspects of this by-election.There are a lot of things we can learn from a by-election.On the nomination day, we can see all the heavy weights or senior leaders of the parties will be with their candidates.They are the project champions of their respective party.Each of the them will act like a project director.They set the guidelines, the rules of engagement and allocate resources.The project managers normally are the candidates themselves.He must set up his election machinery,empower them with adequate resources to get their jobs done.

I got some experience in managing a by-election more than 10 years ago when my brother was selected to contest a parliamentary seat in a general election.It was sleepless nights for me and my family members and friends-very taxing in all aspects-mental,emotional and physical.It is not my intention to write my experience using this posting, but I just want to high light the importance of using project management knowledge and good practice.It will not ensure the candidate will get elected,but it will reduce his chance to fail.In any election,communication is very,very important because there are so many activities,events and decisions being done and made.From project management perspective, the project manager has  to plan,monitor and control on a daily basis.When problems arise, decisions must be made almost immediately.

Another aspect is risk management.Anything can go wrong during the campaign days and on the election day.Just like a wedding,it may take six months of planning, but everything shall be revealed on the wedding day.Just like a wedding, if anything goes wrong,we don't have a second chance to do it again.

By the way, our lives are also projects.It has a start and a finish date,hence temporary,unique and to provide a service.

According to PMI,project management is the application of knowledge,skills,tools and techniques applied to project activities to meet project requirement.