What are the Benefits and problems using project management?

Some of the potential benefits of Project Management are: (1) Increased likelihood of project success and delivery of the project outcomes; (2) Better planning and agreement of requirements increases the likelihood of achieving those agreed objectives; (3) Goal clarity and opportunity to measure performance; (4) Improved use of resources and coordination; (5) Risks are identified and managed through the process; (6) potential for time and cost savings; (7) More likely to achieve an agreed outcome. Some of the problems associated with Project Management: (1) It is easy to think you know how to do it and think you know all the answers; (2) It requires investment of time and effort to plan (from the business case justifying the project through to the close out phase); (3) Once you baseline the plan you need to keep a regular track of it - the chance of delivering exactly what you set out to achieve is remote; (4) Change happens either within the project context or outside it and you need to be able to be prepared to make changes to seize opportunities and have a reserve to fund them; (5) Keep records and have a good configuration management system, otherwise you will be working with out of date data; (6) Get buy-in from Stakeholders as you go along; (7) People make it all happen - make sure you have robust processes, they all know what is going on, they are all bought into it and you communicate, communicate and communicate; (8) Lessons learnt are a good source of ideas, but each project is unique, and should not be run exactly like the last one...each project needs individuals to think things through to make it work - blindly following a template will never work out. There are probably lots more issues, but this should provide an initial start.