Each element contains the techniques and tools of which the project manager must have knowledge of in order to effectively manage the work contained in the project cycle. This last element, Project Leadership, is the most important element because it holds together all the other elements. Without project leadership, projects revert to adhoc and chaos. The first two essentials, common vocabulary and teamwork, are the perpetual properties of the process, the third essential, the project cycle, is the sequential property of the process, and the fourth essential, the project management elements, are the situational property of the process. Once a project cycle is defined, the business, budget, and technical aspects must be managed situationally by the application of the project management elements.
Projects do fail by misapplication of excellent techniques.
To illustrate this relationship, we need to employ three dimensions. The axle and wheel assembly represents the overall process. Most crucial to our project management approach is separation of the sequential and situational aspects into separate domains. The axle represents the sequence of events of the project cycle and the wheel represents the situational application of the ten management elements to lead the project through the cycle. Most project management literature focuses on only two areas of project management, cost and schedule.