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Project Management for Dummies - UK
About This Book
Get projects done on time, on budget, and with maximum efficiency - fully updated UK edition!
In today's time-pressured and cost-conscious global business environment, reliable project management and competent delivery are more important than ever. Increasingly, project management is being seen as an essential management skill for all, as well as a career choice for many. This new UK edition of Project Management For Dummies, 2nd UK Edition quickly introduces you to the principles of successful project management with a clear and logical approach to help you deliver your projects, not only successfully, but also more easily. Unique to the UK edition, you'll find clear guidance on using the highly logical product-based approach to project planning, along with advice on how to release the great power of the technique, not only for effective planning, but also for project control.
Updated with fresh content, tips, and tactics that cover everything you need to know from a project's start to finish, this accessible guide takes you through every stage of project management. You'll discover how to make project planning easier and more effective, manage resources and stay on track within a budget. Then you'll find help and advice to help you motivate and manage your teams to help them perform at their best. To help you stay at the leading edge, you'll also find two new chapters in this edition explaining project governance and the increasingly important international standard ISO 21500. In short, this book will help you master a highly valuable skill for advancing your career.
- Provides clear descriptions of who should do what in a project to prevent communication and control problems
- Presents the latest concepts in project management techniques
- Discusses how to keep risks under control during the project
- Includes access to online project management templates and checklists to aid in learning
If you're a manager taking on a project for the first time or a more experienced project professional looking to get up to speed on the latest thinking and techniques, Project Management For Dummies, 2nd UK Edition equips you for project management success.
Frequently asked questions
Information
Understanding Projects and What You Want to Achieve
- Come to grips with how projects are structured, and learn how to think through the life cycle of your project.
- Get the inside track on why projects are likely to be needed within a business.
- Learn how to answer the question âIs this really a project?â, because not everything is.
- Understand whoâs likely to have an interest in your project, and how you have to deal with them.
Success in Project Management
Taking on a Project
Avoiding the Pitfalls
- Lack of clear objectives: Nobodyâs really sure what the project is about, much less are people agreed on it.
- Lack of risk management: Things go wrong that someone could easily have foreseen and then controlled to some degree, or even prevented.
- No senior management âbuy inâ: Senior managers were never convinced and so never supported the project, leading to problems such as lack of resource. Neither did those managers exercise effective management supervision (good project governance) as they routinely do in their other areas of responsibility.
- Poor planning: Actually, thatâs being kind, because often the problem is that no planning was done at all. Itâs not surprising, then, when things run out of control, and not least because nobody knows where the project should be at this point anyway.
- No clear progress milestones: This follows on from poor planning. The lack of milestones means nobody sees when things are off track, and problems go unnoticed for a long time.
- Understated scope: The scope and the Project Plan are superficial and understate both what the project needs to deliver and the resource needed to deliver it. Project staff (often team members) then discover the hidden but essential components later in the project. The additional work that is necessary then takes the project out of control, causing delay to the original schedule and overspending against the original budget.
- Poor communications: So many projects fail because of communication breakdown, which can stem from unclear roles and responsibilities and from poor senior management attitudes, such as not wanting to hear bad news.
- Unrealistic resource levels: It just isnât possible to do a project of the required scope with such a small amount of resource â staff, money or both.
- Unrealistic timescales: The project just canât deliver by the required time, so itâs doomed to failure.
- No change control: People add in things bit by bit â scope creep. Then it slowly dawns on everyone that the projectâs now grown so big that it canât be delivered within the fixed budget or by the set deadline.
Deciding Whether the Job is a Project
- Is it a one-off job or something thatâs ongoing? If the job is ongoing, like producing bars of soap on a production line or taking customer orders, then itâs business as usual, not a project.
- Does the job justify project controls? Project management means incurring some overheads, although you can find advice in this book on how to keep overheads to the minimum. But the fact remains that there will be overheads in a project (such as for planning, approval and control) and some jobs are so small or straightforward that they just donât justify that degree of control.
- This last one may sound a little weird, and it certainly doesnât fit with the formal definitions; itâs the question, âDo you want to handle the job as a project?â You may choose to deal with a block of work as a project, but I wouldnât â so, in some instances, you have a choice.
Understanding the four control areas
- Scope: What the project will deliver
- Time: When the project will deliver
- Quality: So often forgotten, but an essential dimension
- Resource: Necessary amounts of staff time, funds and other resources such as equipment and accommodation that the pr...
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Part I: Understanding Projects and What You Want to Achieve
- Part II: Planning Time: Determining What, When and How Much
- Part III: Putting Your Management Team Together
- Part IV: Steering the Project to Success
- Part V: Taking Your Project Management to the Next Level
- Part VI: The Part of Tens
- About the Authors
- Cheat Sheet
- More Dummies Products
- End User License Agreement