Almost all of us have been involved in projects whether it be personal or work-related.  Even if you are not a designated leader or project manager, here are four things that are critical to the success of your project:

Scope

The project scope is the most important in the sense that this is where you identify what the project is supposed to achieve or accomplish.  Having an exact idea of what the project is all about, where is it going to be implemented, how is it going to be achieved and who are the people to be involved in the project will make for a well-understood project.  A project manager who understands all aspect of his job will have a higher chance of success.

Resources

A project's resources include the three (3) M's: man, machine and material.  Getting the right people to be involved, complementing them with the necessary machinery and equipment, providing them with the requisite materials will further increase your chances of success.  It must also be said that, your capability as the project manager and how you steer your team towards the accomplishment of every task will play a big role in achieving your objectives.

Time

The time factor primarily refers to the duration of the project.  You must be able to answer the question of how long will it take for your team to accomplish each identified task.  You must also be able to identify critical paths or tasks which must be completed at exactly the right time.  Having knowledge of project management tools like PERT-CPM (Project Evaluation and Review Technique-Critical Path Method) will go a long way in helping you with your project.  There are countless project management tools in the internet that are available freely to everyone.

Money

The fourth factor is no less important.  As they say, "Money moves everything."  In this sense, money will mean not only the costs of the project, but also if after having completed the project you still have enough to call as profit.  It is always good to sit down and do a bit of forecasting about the cost of each resource that will be used.  Having done that, you have already created a financial budget which you can manipulate to include worst-case scenarios.  It is always important to have provisions for natural and man-made contingencies.  It is better to be prepared at all time so that you will not be found flat on your back in cases of unforeseen emergencies.

To further aid you in your project management endeavor, here's a really good website which caters exactly to your project management needs: Taskbarn by Cognitive X Systems (http://www.taskbarn.com). It's a free web application that helps you manage your tasks and projects in a seamless process, aided by a friendly user interface and easy access.

It has an easy registration process - all you need to provide is an e-mail address, your name and your time zone.  A verification code will be sent to your e-mail and further instructions to complete your registration.

Once you logged on to your account, you can now create projects and tasks under it. Taskbarn is free, and here are some cool features that you will find useful later on:

• You can invite clients and friends to be a part of your project and message the
• There is no limit to the number of projects you can do
• You can go solo or collaborate with team members
• Track the project's progress by tracking each member's progress
• Upload facility to share files with up to 100MB of storage per project.