The Economist Guide to Project Management 2nd Edition: Getting it right and achieving lasting benefit

by Paul Roberts

From the Hubble space telescope that was launched with a malfunctioning device that resulted in all the pictures it took being blurred, to the extremely late completion of England's new national soccer stadium at Wembley, history is full of example of projects that damaged organisations because they were late, over budget, failed to deliver what they were meant to, or were complete disasters.This guide explains the principles and techniques of project management and how they are interconnected with the day-to-day management of a business. It is an invaluable handbook for helping firms deliver successful project outcomes and achieve lasting benefit through effective change.

Genres: Business, Management

384 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 26, 2007

About the author

Paul Roberts is an experienced change management practitioner and a founding director of Fifthday (www.fifthday.com). He has consulted widely, and regularly provides related training and education programmes.

He has worked with some of the world's largest, most influential companies, and many of the smallest, both public and private, helping them all to embed the principles, techniques and culture of effective project management.

To contact Paul, please email paul@fifthday.com

"Without doubt the best PM educator in the UK today."

Reviews

[Soha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved it and highly recommend it to anyone who is new to project management.

The author holds your hand as you go through the project management terminology, processes and benefits. I was lucky enough to start reading to find this book when our company was launching a new OS. It was quite easy for me to 'label' what was happening; why certain meetings were being held and so on.

Coming from a medical background, I never paid attention to business terms as they seemed simple enough to guess. There's also a comprehensive beginner's glossary at the end of this book for quick reference.

I've enjoyed reading this book and hope you do too.

[Sunil Choudhary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Economist uses English in the simplest of ways and conveys the core of the difficult subject.

I think this is a book worth every word.

[Blake · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent guide to project management in its traditional sense (i.e. an activity designed to deliver change in a structured manner). Coming from an organization which was consistently executing projects and programs without any systematic approach, I found this book full of wonderful methods and processes for attacking projects. Even if you aren't a traditional project manager, this book is useful for understanding how projects impact an organization and seek to deliver change. Further, many of the methods for planning and scheduling resources are invaluable for anyone who has to meet an objective on time and within budget. With a little imagination you can apply this sections of this book to just about any business problem you seek to solve. I highly recommend this book to anyone who isn't interested in investing thousands of dollars for project management classes and certifications, and just wants a solid foundation. I only gave four stars because hey, let's face it, this is dry stuff!

[Icipiracy Thndrcloud · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book offers a practical point-of-view on project management. The writer approaches project management wherein information and control are the most important factors of a successful project.

Knowing and controlling all of the project, is the method for managing projects. Although I don't entirely disagree, I felt that this point was driven in quite a dry manner. Not entirely unexpected, but I certainly could have been helped better, if the approaches where explained with stronger analogies and real-world cases.

In the end, I did feel better equipped for managing and participating in projects within my organisation. This book might serve as a future reference when I'm planning a project.

[Paul W · Rating 3 out of 5]

Roberts set out to show readers how to manage projects effectively in parallel with ‘business as usual". He takes readers through project conception, planning, initiation, and delivery showing the tools and techniques for effective project management.
While he touches on it in parts, this book would have benefited from more detailed information on why projects fail and what a project manager can do to avoid this.
Without this, the book becomes a dry read and only for those with no, or limited, knowledge, and a close interest in project management.