Project management has become an area of interest in all types of organization and the skills required are recognized as highly desirable at all levels. The role of project manager requires maintaining a balance between the demands of the customer, project, team and the organization. This provides a real challenge in the fields of time management and prioritization. Successful Project Management will enable any manager to significantly raise the probability of success with their projects and contains practical and well-tested techniques. This step-by-step guide will help you with: project conception and start-up; managing project stakeholders; managing risks; project planning; project launch and execution; closure and evaluation. Complete with checklists and specific guidance notes, this essential book covers the entire project management process and will improve your chances of success.
I was in a library when I got a phone call from a client across the ocean who wanted my services for a project's monitoring and evaluation assignment. I knew the country and the project and gladly accepted the job. As our conversation ended on a positive note, my eyes fell on a book. It had the word "succesful" in its title. It resonated with my aspiration for the upcoming assignment. So I bought "Successful Project Management" by Trevor L Young. It is among my first books on project management. It still has my notes made on post-its inside.
The book is based on the presumption that the reader has already some experience of involvement in one or more projects. I think it contains valuable guidance on project management for beginners. And not only. I get back to it from time to time to refresh my basics or to get inspiration in explaining more complex issues to a non-project audience.
The book starts with explaining how success is or can be defined in the projects environment. It takes you then to "The climate for success" and then introduces one by one the key steps in the project process for success. It focuses a great deal on managing risks and the planning stage of the project, two critical areas in a recipe for success. Each book section contains a "Watchpoint" to draw attention to usually forgotten basics or critical issues. It offers a list of standard formats for data recording and a list of Further Reading I keep finding handy in day-to-day project life.
Back to my assignment, the book helped me produce a structured and well articulated evaluation, based on which the client decided to recover the project. So it went from "near-to-failure" to a success and innovation example, to the satisfaction of the client and the beneficiary.
Here is a prime example of a successful project being concluded – this book - which sets out to teach the basics (or refresh one’s memory) of project management.
It is a concise little book with a small price tag to match, yet it packs a very powerful punch in the process. Using a mix of case studies, exercises and checklists to good effect, the reader is able to get a great technical understanding of the subject and immediately start to use the knowledge in a practical setting. Of course, there is no shortage of project management-type books in the marketplace and whilst this book cannot go into the depth and detail of its larger cousins, it meets its core objectives well and can inspire the reader to want to dive even deeper into the subject with one or more of those big, fat, thick project management books. The publisher will, no doubt, have a few recommended titles on its lists for the reader to consider…
If you are a beginner to this project management lark, this is a great book to help get you quickly up-to-speed on the essentials; you can always build out your knowledge at a more leisurely pace afterwards. If you are a more experienced project manager or leader there is no shame in looking at this as you might find a new hint, tip or something you are already doing that can be improved upon. No plain-brown paper covering is needed for this book!
Definitely something worthy of closer consideration and possible purchase!
I really enjoyed this book for quite a few reasons - it's written in an easy to understand manner (whether you're a project manager or not), it's got exercises to practice, charts, flow diagrams to break up the text, and my favorite - checklists. It's a book I know I'll refer to (since my my memory can be sketchy!). Some of it was familiar, but it's nice to get reminders in one book rather than a few blips at a time.