Stanley E. Portny - Project Management For Dummies

Project Management For Dummies, 5th Edition

Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com

Copyright 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the Publisher. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions .

Trademarks: Wiley, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, Dummies.com, Making Everything Easier, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

LIMIT OF LIABILITY/DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY: WHILE THE PUBLISHER AND AUTHOR HAVE USED THEIR BEST EFFORTS IN PREPARING THIS BOOK, THEY MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS BOOK AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. NO WARRANTY MAY BE CREATED OR EXTENDED BY SALES REPRESENTATIVES OR WRITTEN SALES MATERIALS. THE ADVICE AND STRATEGIES CONTAINED HEREIN MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR YOUR SITUATION. YOU SHOULD CONSULT WITH A PROFESSIONAL WHERE APPROPRIATE. NEITHER THE PUBLISHER NOR THE AUTHOR SHALL BE LIABLE FOR DAMAGES ARISING HEREFROM.

For general information on our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002. For technical support, please visit https://hub.wiley.com/community/support/dummies .

Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com . For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com .

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017950649

ISBN 978-1-119-34890-0 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-34889-4 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-34892-4 (ebk)

1. Table of Contents

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 todays world, people who want to devote their careers to planning and managing those projects are still vital to their successes. Over the past 30 to 35 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 dont 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.

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 thats 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 wont make you a successful project manager you need to apply it. This books theme is that project-management skills and techniques arent burdensome tasks you perform because some process requires it. Rather, theyre a way of thinking, communicating, and behaving. Theyre an integral part of how we approach all aspects of our work every day.

So Ive written the book to be direct and (relatively) easy to understand. But dont be misled the simple text still navigates all the critical tools and techniques youll 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 youre determined to practice it!

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 whats 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, theyre not vital to grasping the concepts.

Within this book, you may note that some web addresses break across two lines of text. If youre reading this book in print and want to visit one of these web pages, simply key in the web address exactly as its noted in the text, pretending as though the line break doesnt exist. If youre reading this as an e-book, youve got it easy just click the web address to be taken directly to the web page.