Where should you start if you have never run a project?

With vocabulary, then with breakdown. Understanding what a deliverable is and being able to split a project into sub-sets already covers most situations. Calculation methods such as PERT and the critical path come later, once the structure exists.

Do you need a certification to run a project?

No. A study we ran in December 2025 on 328 project manager job ads in France shows that 40% ask for an engineering degree and 7% for a business school degree, while none requires a project management certification. In practice, engineers and salespeople run the projects.

What is the difference between WBS, PERT and Gantt?

The WBS breaks work down into deliverables and sub-deliverables. PERT declares the sequencing between them and lets you compute float and the critical path. The Gantt chart places all of it in time. They follow in that order: the Gantt is a result, not a starting point.

Do these methods suit small projects?

Yes, with adjusted depth. A two-level WBS and five dependencies are often enough. The point is not exhaustiveness: it is making visible the sequencing you would otherwise discover mid-project.

How long does scoping a project take?

It depends on the project, and we have no measurement of our own to publish on that. What is measured is the difference in outcome: organisations mature in project management meet their original schedule 63% of the time, against 39% for the others (PMI, Pulse of the Profession 2020).

Resources to structure your projects and make deadlines reliable

Understand why projects slip, how to avoid drift from the pre-project phase, and choose the right approach.

Where to start?

New to project management?

Understand what a project really is… and its limits

Understand projects

Are your projects slipping?

Fuzzy deadlines, misaligned teams, client stress

Project drift

Looking for a solution?

Compare approaches and avoid the wrong choices

Choose the right solution

Want to know more about Orchesia?

How Orchesia structures the pre-project to make deadlines reliable

Discover the Orchesia approach

What the research says about projects that slip

Project management is not short of methods. It is short of projects where those methods are applied. The four figures below come from named studies, not estimates.

48%

of organisations do not produce project scoping documents, or not consistently

Wellingtone, State of Project Management 2021

48%

of projects finish with a variance against the original schedule

PMI, Pulse of the Profession 2018 — 4,455 practitioners

35%

of failed projects cite inadequate requirements gathering among the main causes — ahead of poor communication (29%) and cost estimation (28%)

PMI, Pulse of the Profession 2018

63% vs 39%

of organisations mature in project management meet their original schedule, against immature ones

PMI, Pulse of the Profession 2020 — 3,060 practitioners

These causes share one trait: they all sit before execution. A project does not slip because it was tracked badly. It slips because it was built badly.

Structuring a project, step by step

The articles on this site follow four steps. Each answers a question asked by someone who was never trained in project management — which, more often than not, is the person handed the project.

01
Understand what you are dealing with
A project has a start, an end, a single objective and defined resources. Vocabulary matters: WBS, PERT, critical path and Gantt chart name precise things, and confusing them is enough to make a schedule unusable.
02
Spot the drift before it costs
Scope does not expand all at once: it expands a little with each request, without any decision being made. Dependencies surface at the moment they block. Both mechanisms are known and can be caught early.
- Scope creep in projects
- Hidden project dependencies
03
Apply a method
Break the work down into deliverables, declare the sequencing, then compute float and the critical path. The schedule is no longer drawn by hand: it follows from the structure. This is the part the market serves least.
04
Put a tool behind it
A method that lives in a spreadsheet maintained by one person is a fragile method. These two articles show the same approach applied in Orchesia, from breakdown to schedule.
- Build a WBS in Orchesia
- Build a PERT chart in Orchesia

Frequently asked questions

Where should you start if you have never run a project?: With vocabulary, then with breakdown. Understanding what a deliverable is and being able to split a project into sub-sets already covers most situations. Calculation methods such as PERT and the critical path come later, once the structure exists.
Do you need a certification to run a project?: No. A study we ran in December 2025 on 328 project manager job ads in France shows that 40% ask for an engineering degree and 7% for a business school degree, while none requires a project management certification. In practice, engineers and salespeople run the projects.
What is the difference between WBS, PERT and Gantt?: The WBS breaks work down into deliverables and sub-deliverables. PERT declares the sequencing between them and lets you compute float and the critical path. The Gantt chart places all of it in time. They follow in that order: the Gantt is a result, not a starting point.
Do these methods suit small projects?: Yes, with adjusted depth. A two-level WBS and five dependencies are often enough. The point is not exhaustiveness: it is making visible the sequencing you would otherwise discover mid-project.
How long does scoping a project take?: It depends on the project, and we have no measurement of our own to publish on that. What is measured is the difference in outcome: organisations mature in project management meet their original schedule 63% of the time, against 39% for the others (PMI, Pulse of the Profession 2020).

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