Project Management For Dummies E-Book

Stanley E. Portny

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 568

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

The bestselling "bible" of project management In today's time-crunched, cost-conscious global business environment, tight project deadlines and stringent expectations are the norm. Now with 25 percent new and updated content, Project Management For Dummies introduces you to the principles of successful project management and shows you how to motivate any team to gain maximum productivity. You'll learn how to organize, estimate, and schedule projects efficiently and effectively. You'll also discover how to manage deliverables, issue changes, assess risks, maintain communications, and live up to expectations by making the most of the latest technology and software--and by avoiding common problems that can trip up even the best project managers. * The latest information on measuring project management ROI and value to the organization (and customers) * Managing Continuous Process Improvement * Examples of formats used for different aspects of project management * Managing distressed projects and managing multiple team projects * Hierarchical decomposition and how it can dramatically improve the effectiveness of project planning and control * The latest trend of embracing the use of social media to drive efficiency and improve socialization * New information on managing and resolving conflicts that occur during a project * Explanations of concepts tested in the PMP® certification exam with study tips and practices to help you pass Project Management For Dummies gives professionals like you everything you need to be successful project managers. (PMI, CAPM, PMP, and Project Management Professional are registered marks of the Project Management Institute, Inc.)

Leseprobe

Project Management For Dummies®, 4th Edition

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Copyright © 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2013933942

ISBN 978-1-118-49723-4 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-49722-7 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-49712-8 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-49713-5 (ebk)

Manufactured in the United States of America

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About the Author

Stan Portny, president of Stanley E. Portny and Associates, LLC, is an internationally recognized expert in project management and project leadership. During the past 35 years, he’s provided training and consultation to more than 200 public and private organizations in consumer products, insurance, pharmaceuticals, finance, information technology, telecommunications, defense, and healthcare. He has developed and conducted training programs for more than 100,000 management and staff personnel in engineering, sales and marketing, research and development, information systems, manufacturing, operations, and support areas.

Stan combines an analyst’s eye with an innate sense of order and balance and a deep respect for personal potential. He helps people understand how to control chaotic environments and produce dramatic results while still achieving personal and professional satisfaction. Widely acclaimed for his dynamic presentations and unusual ability to establish a close rapport with seminar participants, Stan specializes in tailoring his training programs to meet the unique needs of individual organizations. His clients have included ADP, ADT, American International Group, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Burlington Northern Railroad, Hewlett Packard, Johnson & Johnson, Just Born, Nabisco, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, Pitney Bowes, Raymond Corporation, UPS, Vanguard Investment Companies, as well as the United States Navy, Air Force, Central Intelligence Agency, and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

A Project Management Institute–certified Project Management Professional (PMP), Stan received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. He holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering and the degree of electrical engineer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Stan has also studied at the Alfred P. Sloan School of Management and the George Washington University National Law Center.

Stan provides on-site training in all aspects of project management, project team building, and project leadership. He can work with you to assess your organization’s current project-management practices, develop planning and control systems and procedures, and review the progress of ongoing projects. In addition, Stan can serve as the keynote speaker at your organization’s or professional association’s meetings.

To discuss this book or understand how Stan can work with you to enhance your organization's project-management skills and practices, please contact him at Stanley E. Portny and Associates, LLC, 20 Helene Drive, Randolph, New Jersey 07869; phone [phone]; e-mail [email protected]; website www.StanPortny.com.

Dedication

To my wife, Donna; my son, Brian; my son and daughter-in-law, Jonathan and Marci; and my granddaughter, Elena. May we continue to share life’s joys together.

Author’s Acknowledgments

Writing and publishing this book was a team effort, and I would like to thank the many people who helped to make it possible. First, I want to thank Tracy Boggier, my acquisitions editor, who first contacted me to discuss the possibility of writing this fourth edition of my book. Thanks to her for making that phone call, for helping me prepare the proposal, for helping to get the project off to a smooth and timely start, for coordinating the publicity and sales, and for helping to bring all the pieces to a successful conclusion.

Thanks to Chrissy Guthrie, my project editor, and Amanda Langferman and Megan Knoll, my copy editors, for their guidance, support, and the many hours they spent polishing the text into a smooth, finished product. And thanks to Mike Fisher, my technical reviewer, for his many insightful observations and suggestions.

Finally, thanks to my family for their continued help and inspiration. Thanks to Donna, who never doubted that this book would become a reality and who shared personal and stylistic comments as she reviewed the text countless times while always making it seem like she found it enjoyable and enlightening. Thanks to Brian, Jonathan, and Marci, whose interest and excitement helped motivate me to see the fourth edition of this book through to completion.

Publisher’s Acknowledgments

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Project Management For Dummies®, 4th Edition

Visit www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/projectmanagement to view this book's cheat sheet.

Table of Contents

Introduction

About This Book

Conventions Used in This Book

What You’re Not to Read

Foolish Assumptions

How This Book Is Organized

Part I: Getting Started with Project Management

Part II: Planning Time: Determining When and How Much

Part III: Group Work: Putting Your Team Together

Part IV: Steering the Ship: Managing Your Project to Success

Part V: Taking Your Project Management to the Next Level

Part VI: The Part of Tens

Icons Used in This Book

Where to Go from Here

Part I: Getting Started with Project Management

Chapter 1: Project Management: The Key to Achieving Results

Determining What Makes a Project a Project

Understanding the three main components that define a project

Recognizing the diversity of projects

Describing the four stages of a project

Defining Project Management

Starting with the initiating processes

Outlining the planning processes

Examining the executing processes

Surveying the monitoring and controlling processes

Ending with the closing processes

Knowing the Project Manager’s Role

Looking at the project manager’s tasks

Staving off excuses for not following a structured project-management approach

Avoiding “shortcuts”

Staying aware of other potential challenges

Do You Have What It Takes to Be an Effective Project Manager?

Questions

Answer key

Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 5

Chapter 2: Knowing Your Project’s Audience: Involving the Right People

Understanding Your Project’s Audiences

Developing an Audience List

Starting your audience list

Ensuring your audience list is complete and up-to-date

Using an audience list template

Considering the Drivers, Supporters, and Observers in Your Audience

Deciding when to involve your audiences

Using different methods to involve your audiences

Making the most of your audiences’ involvement

Displaying Your Audience List

Confirming Your Audience’s Authority

Assessing Your Audience’s Power and Interest

Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 5

Chapter 3: Clarifying What You’re Trying to Accomplish — And Why

Defining Your Project with a Scope Statement

Looking at the Big Picture: Explaining the Need for Your Project

Figuring out why you’re doing the project

Drawing the line: Where your project starts and stops

Stating your project’s objectives

Marking Boundaries: Project Constraints

Working within limitations

Dealing with needs

Facing the Unknowns When Planning: Documenting Your Assumptions

Presenting Your Scope Statement in a Clear and Concise Document

Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 5

Chapter 4: Developing Your Game Plan: Getting from Here to There

Divide and Conquer: Breaking Your Project into Manageable Chunks

Thinking in detail

Identifying necessary project work with a Work Breakdown Structure

Dealing with special situations

Creating and Displaying Your Work Breakdown Structure

Considering different schemes to create your WBS hierarchy

Using one of two approaches to develop your WBS

Categorizing your project’s work

Labeling your WBS entries

Displaying your WBS in different formats

Improving the quality of your WBS

Using templates

Identifying Risks While Detailing Your Work

Documenting What You Need to Know about Your Planned Project Work

Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 5

Part II: Planning Time: Determining When and How Much

Chapter 5: You Want This Project Done When?

Picture This: Illustrating a Work Plan with a Network Diagram

Defining a network diagram’s elements

Drawing a network diagram

Analyzing a Network Diagram

Reading a network diagram

Interpreting a network diagram

Working with Your Project’s Network Diagram

Determining precedence

Using a network diagram to analyze a simple example

Developing Your Project’s Schedule

Taking the first steps

Avoiding the pitfall of backing in to your schedule

Meeting an established time constraint

Applying different strategies to arrive at your picnic in less time

Estimating Activity Duration

Determining the underlying factors

Considering resource characteristics

Finding sources of supporting information

Improving activity duration estimates

Displaying Your Project’s Schedule

Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 5

Chapter 6: Establishing Whom You Need, How Much, and When

Getting the Information You Need to Match People to Tasks

Deciding what skills and knowledge team members must have

Representing team members’ skills, knowledge, and interests in a Skills Matrix

Estimating Needed Commitment

Using a Human Resources Matrix

Identifying needed personnel in a Human Resources Matrix

Estimating required work effort

Factoring productivity, efficiency, and availability into work-effort estimates

Reflecting efficiency when you use historical data

Accounting for efficiency in personal work-effort estimates

Ensuring Your Project Team Members Can Meet Their Resource Commitments

Planning your initial allocations

Resolving potential resource overloads

Coordinating assignments across multiple projects

Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 5

Chapter 7: Planning for Other Resources and Developing the Budget

Determining Nonpersonnel Resource Needs

Making Sense of the Dollars: Project Costs and Budgets

Looking at different types of project costs

Recognizing the three stages of a project budget

Refining your budget as you move through your project’s stages

Determining project costs for a detailed budget estimate

Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 5

Chapter 8: Venturing into the Unknown: Dealing with Risk

Defining Risk and Risk Management

Focusing on Risk Factors and Risks

Recognizing risk factors

Identifying risks

Assessing Risks: Probability and Consequences

Gauging the likelihood of a risk

Estimating the extent of the consequences

Getting Everything under Control: Managing Risk

Choosing the risks you want to manage

Developing a risk-management strategy

Communicating about risks

Preparing a Risk-Management Plan

Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 5

Part III: Group Work: Putting Your Team Together

Chapter 9: Aligning the Key Players for Your Project

Defining Three Organizational Environments

The functional structure

The projectized structure

The matrix structure

Recognizing the Key Players in a Matrix Environment

The project manager

Project team members

Functional managers

Upper management

Working Successfully in a Matrix Environment

Creating and continually reinforcing a team identity

Getting team member commitment

Eliciting support from other people in the environment

Heading off common problems before they arise

Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 5

Chapter 10: Defining Team Members’ Roles and Responsibilities

Outlining the Key Roles

Distinguishing authority, responsibility, and accountability

Understanding the difference between authority and responsibility

Making Project Assignments

Delving into delegation

Sharing responsibility

Holding people accountable — even when they don’t report to you

Picture This: Depicting Roles with a Responsibility Assignment Matrix

Introducing the elements of a RAM

Reading a RAM

Developing a RAM

Ensuring your RAM is accurate

Dealing with Micromanagement

Realizing why a person micromanages

Gaining a micromanager’s trust

Working well with a micromanager

Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 5

Chapter 11: Starting Your Project Team Off on the Right Foot

Finalizing Your Project’s Participants

Are you in? Confirming your team members’ participation

Assuring that others are on board

Filling in the blanks

Developing Your Team

Reviewing the approved project plan

Developing team and individual goals

Specifying team member roles

Defining your team’s operating processes

Supporting the development of team member relationships

Resolving conflicts

All together now: Helping your team become a smooth-functioning unit

Laying the Groundwork for Controlling Your Project

Selecting and preparing your tracking systems

Establishing schedules for reports and meetings

Setting your project’s baseline

Hear Ye, Hear Ye! Announcing Your Project

Setting the Stage for Your Post-Project Evaluation

Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 5

Part IV: Steering the Ship: Managing Your Project to Success

Chapter 12: Tracking Progress and Maintaining Control

Holding On to the Reins: Project Control

Establishing Project Management Information Systems

The clock’s ticking: Monitoring schedule performance

All in a day’s work: Monitoring work effort

Follow the money: Monitoring expenditures

Putting Your Control Process into Action

Heading off problems before they occur

Formalizing your control process

Identifying possible causes of delays and variances

Identifying possible corrective actions

Getting back on track: Rebaselining

Reacting Responsibly When Changes Are Requested

Responding to change requests

Creeping away from scope creep

Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 5

Chapter 13: Keeping Everyone Informed

I Said What I Meant and I Meant What I Said: Successful Communication Basics

Breaking down the communication process

Distinguishing one-way and two-way communication

Can you hear me? Listening actively

Choosing the Appropriate Medium for Project Communication

Just the facts: Written reports

Move it along: Meetings that work

Preparing a Written Project-Progress Report

Making a list (of names) and checking it twice

Knowing what’s hot (and what’s not) in your report

Earning a Pulitzer, or at least writing an interesting report

Holding Key Project Meetings

Regularly scheduled team meetings

Ad hoc team meetings

Upper-management progress reviews

Preparing a Project Communications Management Plan

Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 5

Chapter 14: Encouraging Peak Performance by Providing Effective Leadership

Exploring the Difference between Leadership and Management

Recognizing the Traits People Look For in a Leader

Developing Personal Power and Influence

Understanding why people do what you ask

Establishing the bases of your power

You Can Do It! Creating and Sustaining Team Member Motivation

Increasing commitment by clarifying your project’s benefits

Encouraging persistence by demonstrating project feasibility

Letting people know how they’re doing

Providing rewards for work well done

Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 5

Chapter 15: Bringing Your Project to Closure

Staying the Course to Completion

Planning ahead for your project’s closure

Updating your initial closure plans when you’re ready to wind down the project

Charging up your team for the sprint to the finish line

Handling Administrative Issues

Providing a Smooth Transition for Team Members

Surveying the Results: The Post-Project Evaluation

Preparing for the evaluation throughout the project

Setting the stage for the evaluation meeting

Conducting the evaluation meeting

Following up on the evaluation

Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 5

Part V: Taking Your Project Management to the Next Level

Chapter 16: Using Technology to Enhance Project Planning and Management

Using Computer Software Effectively

Looking at your software options

Helping your software perform at its best

Introducing project-management software into your operations

Using Social Media to Enhance Project Management

Defining social media

Exploring how social media can support your project planning and performance

Using social media to support your project communications

Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 5

Chapter 17: Monitoring Project Performance with Earned Value Management

Defining Earned Value Management

Getting to know EVM terms and formulas

Looking at a simple example

Determining the reasons for observed variances

The How-To: Applying Earned Value Management to Your Project

Determining a Task’s Earned Value

Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 5

Part VI: The Part of Tens

Chapter 18: Ten Questions to Ask Yourself as You Plan Your Project

What’s the Purpose of Your Project?

Whom Do You Need to Involve?

What Results Will You Produce?

What Constraints Must You Satisfy?

What Assumptions Are You Making?

What Work Has to Be Done?

When Does Each Activity Start and End?

Who Will Perform the Project Work?

What Other Resources Do You Need?

What Can Go Wrong?

Chapter 19: Ten Tips for Being a Better Project Manager

Be a “Why” Person

Be a “Can Do” Person

Think about the Big Picture

Think in Detail

Assume Cautiously

View People as Allies, Not Adversaries

Say What You Mean and Mean What You Say

Respect Other People

Acknowledge Good Performance

Be a Manager and a Leader

Appendix: Combining the Techniques into Smooth-Flowing Processes

Cheat Sheet

Introduction

Projects have been around since ancient times. Noah building the ark, Leonardo da Vinci painting the Mona Lisa, Edward Gibbon writing The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Jonas Salk developing the polio vaccine — all projects. And as you know, these were all masterful successes. (Well, the products were a spectacular success, even if schedules and resource budgets were drastically overrun!)

Why, then, is the topic of project management of such great interest today? The answer is simple: The audience has changed and the stakes are higher.

Historically, projects were large, complex undertakings. The first project to use modern project-management techniques — the Polaris weapons system in the early 1950s — was a technical and administrative nightmare. Teams of specialists planned and tracked the myriad of research, development, and production activities. They produced mountains of paper to document the intricate work. As a result, people started to view project management as a highly technical discipline with confusing charts and graphs; they saw it as inordinately time-consuming, specialist-driven, and definitely off-limits for the common man or woman!

Because of the ever-growing array of huge, complex, and technically challenging projects in today’s world, people who want to devote their careers to planning and managing those projects are still vital to their successes. Over the past 25 to 30 years, however, the number of projects in the regular workplace has skyrocketed. Projects of all types and sizes are now the way that organizations accomplish their work.

At the same time, a new breed of project manager has emerged. This new breed may not have set career goals to become project managers — many among them don’t even consider themselves to be project managers. But they do know they must successfully manage projects to move ahead in their careers. Clearly, project management has become a critical skill, not a career choice.

Even though these people realize they need special tools, techniques, and knowledge to handle their new types of assignments, they may not be able or willing to devote large amounts of time to acquiring them, which is where this book comes into play. I devote this book to that silent majority of project managers.

About This Book

This book helps you recognize that the basic tenets of successful project management are simple. The most complex analytical technique takes less than ten minutes to master! In this book, I introduce information that’s necessary to plan and manage projects, and I provide important guidelines for developing and using this information. Here, you discover that the real challenge to a successful project is dealing with the multitude of people whom a project may affect or need for support. I present plenty of tips, hints, and guidelines for identifying key players and then involving them.

But knowledge alone won’t make you a successful project manager — you need to apply it. This book’s theme is that project-management skills and techniques aren’t burdensome tasks you perform because some process requires it. Rather, they’re a way of thinking, communicating, and behaving. They’re an integral part of how we approach all aspects of our work every day.

So I’ve written the book to be direct and (relatively) easy to understand. But don’t be misled — the simple text still navigates all the critical tools and techniques you’ll need to support your project planning, scheduling, budgeting, organizing, and controlling. So buckle up!

I present this information in a logical and modular progression. Examples and illustrations are plentiful — so are the tips and hints. And I inject humor from time to time to keep it all doable. My goal is that you finish this book feeling that good project management is a necessity and that you’re determined to practice it!

Conventions Used in This Book

I use the following conventions to help you find your way through this book:

I use italics to point out new words and to alert you to their definitions, which are always close by. On occasion, I also use italics for added emphasis.

I use bold text to indicate keywords in bulleted lists or to highlight action parts in numbered lists.

I put all websites in monofont.

When this book was printed, some web addresses may have needed to break across two lines of text. If that happened, rest assured that I haven’t put in any extra characters (such as hyphens) to indicate the break. So when using one of these web addresses, just type in exactly what you see in this book, pretending as though the line break doesn’t exist.

What You’re Not to Read

Of course, I want you to read every single word, but I understand your life is busy and you may have time to read only what’s relevant to your experience. In that case, feel free to skip the sidebars. Although the sidebars offer interesting, real-life stories of my own experiences, they’re not vital to grasping the concepts.

Foolish Assumptions

When writing this book, I assumed that a widely diverse group of people would read it, including the following:

Senior managers and junior assistants (tomorrow’s senior managers)

Experienced project managers and people who’ve never been on a project team

People who’ve had significant project-management training and people who’ve had none

People who’ve had years of real-world business and government experience and people who’ve just entered the workforce

I assume that you have a desire to take control of your environment. After reading this book, I hope you wonder (and rightfully so) why all projects aren’t well managed — because you’ll think these techniques are so logical, straightforward, and easy to use. But I also assume you recognize there’s a big difference between knowing what to do and doing it. And I assume you realize you’ll have to work hard to overcome the forces that conspire to prevent you from using these tools and techniques.

Finally, I assume you’ll realize that you can read this book repeatedly and learn something new and different each time. Think of this book as a comfortable resource that has more to share as you experience new situations.

How This Book Is Organized

Each chapter is self-contained, so you can read the chapters that interest you the most first — without feeling lost because you haven’t read the book from front to back. The book is divided into the following six parts.

Part I: Getting Started with Project Management

In this part, I discuss the unique characteristics of projects and what project management is all about. I also show you how to identify the people who will play a role in your project, how to clearly define your project’s proposed results, and how to determine your project’s work.

Part II: Planning Time: Determining When and How Much

In this part, I cover how to develop the project schedule and estimate the resources (both personnel and nonpersonnel) you need. I also show you how to identify and manage project risks.

Part III: Group Work: Putting Your Team Together

In this part, I show you how to identify, organize, and deal with people who play a part in your project’s success. I explain how to define team members’ roles and get your project off to a strong start.

Part IV: Steering the Ship: Managing Your Project to Success

In this part, I explain how to monitor, track, analyze, and report on your project’s activities. I also show you how to establish and maintain effective communications between you and all your project audiences and how to demonstrate leadership that energizes your project team. Then I discuss how to bring your project to a successful closure.

Part V: Taking Your Project Management to the Next Level

Here, I discuss how to use available technology to help you plan, organize, and control your project. I also discuss a technique for evaluating activity performance and resource expenditures on larger projects.

Part VI: The Part of Tens

Every For Dummies book has this fun part that gives you tidbits of information in an easy-to-chew format. In this part, I share tips on how to plan your project and and how to be a better project manager.

I also include one additional nugget of information: The appendix illustrates systematic processes for planning your project and for using the essential controls that I discuss throughout this book.

Icons Used in This Book

I include small icons in the left margins of the book to alert you to special information in the text. Here’s what they mean:

This icon leads into actual situations illustrating techniques and issues.

I use this icon to point out important information you need to keep in mind as you apply the techniques and approaches.

This icon highlights techniques or approaches you can use to improve your project-management practices.

This icon highlights potential pitfalls and danger spots.

Where to Go from Here

You can read this book in many ways, depending on your own project-management knowledge and experience and your current needs. However, I suggest you first take a minute to scan the table of contents and thumb through the sections of the book to get a feeling for the topics I address.

If you’re new to project management and are just beginning to form a plan for a project, first read Parts I and II, which explain how to plan outcomes, activities, schedules, and resources. If you want to find out how to identify and organize your project’s team and other key people, start with Part III. If you’re ready to begin work or you’re already in the midst of your project, you may want to start with Part IV. Or feel free to jump back and forth, hitting the chapters with topics that interest you the most.

The most widely recognized reference of project-management best practices is A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), published by the Project Management Institute (PMI). The fifth and most recent edition of PMBOK (PMBOK 5) was published in 2013. The Project Management Professional (PMP) certification — the most recognized project-management credential throughout the world — includes an examination (administered by PMI) with questions based on PMBOK 5.

Because I base my book on best practices for project-management activities, the tools and techniques I offer are in accordance with PMBOK 5. However, if you’re preparing to take the PMP examination, use my book as a companion to PMBOK 5, not as a substitute for it.

As you read this book, keep the following points in mind:

PMBOK 5 identifies what best practices are but doesn’t address in detail how to perform them or deal with difficulties you may encounter as you try to perform them. In contrast, my book focuses heavily on how to perform the project-management techniques and processes.

I’ve revised and updated my book so that all the tools and techniques discussed and all the terminology used to describe those tools and techniques are in agreement with those used in PMBOK 5.

Where appropriate, I include a section at the end of each chapter that specifies where the topics in the chapter are addressed in PMBOK 5.

PMBOK 5 often contains highly technical language and detailed processes, which people mistakenly dismiss as being relevant only for larger projects. My book, however, deliberately frames terms and discussions to be user-friendly. As a result, people who work on projects of all sizes can understand how to apply the tools and techniques presented.

No matter how you make your way through this book, plan on reading all the chapters more than once — the more you read a chapter, the more sense its approaches and techniques will make. And who knows? A change in your job responsibilities may create a need for certain techniques you’ve never used before. Have fun and good luck!

Part I

Getting Started with Project Management

For Dummies can help you get started with lots of subjects. Visit www.dummies.com to learn more and do more with For Dummies.

In this part . . .

Discover what project management is all about and whether you have what it takes to be a successful project manager.

Find out how to identify people who may need to be involved in your project and decide whether, when, and how to involve them. After you know who should be involved, determine who has the authority, power, and interest to make critical decisions along the way.

Think about the big picture of what your project is trying to accomplish (and why). Then get the scoop on writing a Scope Statement to confirm the results your project will produce and the constraints and assumptions under which everyone will work.

Outline the work you have to do to meet the expectations for your project and find out how to break that work down into manageable chunks.

Chapter 1

Project Management: The Key to Achieving Results

In This Chapter

Defining a project and its four stages

Breaking down project management

Identifying the project manager’s role

Determining whether you have what you need to be a successful project manager

Successful organizations create projects that produce desired results in established time frames with assigned resources. As a result, businesses are increasingly driven to find individuals who can excel in this project-oriented environment.

Because you’re reading this book, chances are good that you’ve been asked to manage a project. So, hang on tight — you’re going to need a new set of skills and techniques to steer that project to successful completion. But not to worry! This chapter gets you off to a smooth start by showing you what projects and project management really are and by helping you separate projects from nonproject assignments. This chapter also offers the rationale for why projects succeed or fail and gets you into the project-management mindset.