Product Description

You've just been handed your department's biggest project and you probably aren't sure where to even begin. Whether you have 6 months or 6 weeks to complete it, being an effective project manager can make all the difference to the end result. Absolute Beginner's Guide to Project Management can help you quickly become an effective and efficient project manager when time matters most. Through topics such as "building a project budget and schedule" to "managing vendors," this book will guide you through what works and what doesn't based on tried and true practices. Your learning will be focused on the skills and qualities of effective project managers, leadership styles and project trends, including information technology, outsourcing and virtual teams. Let Absolute Beginner's Guide to Project Management help you take your project from start to finish.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14908 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

About the Author

Absolute Beginner's Guide to Project ManagementAbout the Author

Gregory M. Horine is a published author (PMP Exam Cram 2) and certified project management and business technology professional (PMP, CCP) with more than 16 years of consulting experience across multiple industries. His primary areas of professional expertise include

• Project management and leadership

• Complex application development

• Enterprise solution development

• Business process analysis and improvement

• Data analysis and transformation

• Package implementation and integration

• Vendor and procurement management

• Regulatory and process compliance

• Project management tools

• Computer systems validation

• Testing processes

• Quality and risk management

In addition, Mr. Horine holds a master's degree in computer science from Ball State University and a bachelor's degree in both marketing and computer science from Anderson College (Anderson, IN).

Through his "servant leadership" approach, Mr. Horine has established a track record of empowering his teammates, improving project communications, overcoming technical and political obstacles, and successfully completing projects that meet the targeted objectives.

Mr. Horine is grateful for the guidance and the opportunities that he has received from many mentors throughout his career. Their patience and influence has resulted in a rewarding career that has been marked by continuous learning and improvement.

You can access a recent interview of Mr. Horine by the Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS) and the Networking Professionals Association (NPA) at these respective websites:

http://www.npanet.org/public/interviews/careers_interview_121.cfm

http://www.stephenibaraki.com/cips/feb04/ghor.asp

When not engaged in professional endeavors, Mr. Horine hones his project management skills at home with his lovely wife, Mayme, and his five incredible children: Michael, Victoria, Alex, Luke, and Elayna.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction

As organizations continue to move toward "project-based" management to get more done with less resources, and as the demand for effective project managers continues to grow, more and more individuals find themselves with the "opportunity" to manage projects for the first time.

In an ideal world, every new project manager candidate would complete certified project management training programs and serve as an apprentice before starting their first project manager opportunity, but...this is the real world. In many cases, a quicker, more accessible, and more economical alternative is needed to guide this audience in managing projects successfully the first time.

The Absolute Beginner's Guide to Project Management is intended to provide this alternative with a helpful, fun, and informative style.

About This Book

Let's take a quick review of the objectives and approach of this book.

Objectives

The objectives of this book include the following:

• To be an easy-to-use tutorial and reference resource for any person managing their first project(s)

• To teach the key concepts and fundamentals behind the project management techniques

• If these are understood, they can be applied effectively independent of toolset, environment, or industry

• To reduce the "on-the-job" learning curve by sharing the traits of successful projects and "lessons learned" from less-than-successful projects

• To balance the breadth of topics covered with adequate depth in specific areas to best prepare a new project manager

• To review the skills and qualities of effective project managers

• Emphasize the importance of project "leadership" versus just project "management"

Approach

Consistent with the Absolute Beginner's Guide series, this book will use a teaching style to review the essential techniques and skills needed to successfully manage a project. By "teaching" style, we intend the following:

• A mentoring, coaching style.

• Assumes that the reader does not have previous hands-on experience with project management.

• Teaches the material as if an instructor were physically present.

• Task-oriented, logically ordered, self-contained lessons (chapters) that can be read and comprehended in a short period of time (15–30 min).

• Emphasis on understanding the principle behind the technique or practice.

• Teaches the material independent of specific tools and methodologies.

• Teaches the material with the assumption that the reader does not have access to organizational templates or methodologies.

• Provides a summary map of the main ideas covered at the end of each chapter. Research has shown that this type of "mind-map" approach can drive better memory recollection when compared to traditional linear summary approaches.

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Out-of-Scope - The scope of this book is clearly outlined in the table of contents, but as we will cover later, it is always good to review what is out of scope to ensure understanding of the scope boundaries. Since the field of project management is extremely broad, and we needed to draw the line somewhere, this book focuses on the proper management of a single project. As a result, the following advanced project management subjects are not covered in this book:

• Program management

• Enterprise portfolio management

• Enterprise resource management

• Advanced project risk management topics

• Advanced project quality management topics

• Advanced project procurement management topics

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Who Should Read This Book?

The Absolute Beginner's Guide to Project Management is recommended for any person who fits into one or more of the following categories:

• Individuals unsatisfied with other introductory project management books

• Individuals new to project management, such as

Technologists

Knowledge workers

Students

Functional managers

• Professionals taking first project management assignment, such as

Team leaders

Project coordinators

Project administrators

Project support

Functional managers

• Experienced project managers needing a refresher course

• Experienced project managers with limited formal project management education

How This Book Is Organized

This book has been divided into four parts:

• Part I, "Project Management Jumpstart," sets up the general framework for our project management discussion and accelerates your project management learning curve, including an insightful review of successful projects and project managers.

• Part II, "Project Planning," reviews the processes that establish the foundation for your project.

• Part III, "Project Control," reviews the processes that allow you to effectively monitor, track, correct, and protect your project's performance.

• Part IV, "Project Execution," reviews the key leadership and people-focused skills that you need to meet today's business demands.

Conventions Used in This Book

• At the beginning of each chapter, you'll find a quick view of the major topics that will be expounded upon as you read through the material that follows.

• The end of each chapter provides a list of key points along with a visual summary map.

• You will also find several special sidebars used throughout this book:

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Caution - These boxes highlight specific warnings that the project manager should be aware of.

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Tip - These boxes highlight specific techniques or recommendations that could be helpful to most project managers.

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Note - These boxes highlight specific learning points or provide supporting information to the current topic.

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© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Full of Information
I have re-read a number of books immediately after reading them for the first time. Re-reading well-written fiction is of course a pleasure, but I usually reserve this technique for non-fiction that is hard to understand or very dense, and I may re-read immediately after the first read or months or years later.

This book is the first I have decided to re-read before I even finished it. The information presented is so full of useful knowledge that I realized I would forget most of the points while I was taking in the newer stuff. With the diagrams and summaries there is a vast amount of content here.

I have one small criticism that I'd like to make. The book shows common-sense techniques for project management, and on subjects like this we feel we could do the job based on instinct. I think that the book, instead of being almost exclusively saying DO THIS, should have a few examples of DON'T DO THIS. Stories that involve mistakes and disasters tend to make the lesson more memorable.

I have written several books, and I have rarely been more impressed at how the author handles huge amounts of information.

Anyway, this book is worth five stars.

EDIT: Forgot to mention it, but the book has a dangerous typo. On page 208, the book says "Exclude" but the word intended is "Exude" - in this case, that's almost 180 degrees from the intended meaning.

And a big Hi! to my loyal fans. Glad you trust what I say.

The Bible of Project Management
I have been practicing project management/program management and PMO management for 40 years. This is not only a great reference book for all PM's of any sophistication but it should be the Textbook for Technical Colleges and Universities for Project Management courses. I hold it in the same group as the Capers & Jones book on software engineering

Missing the practical approach
This is one of the better books about PMBOK-based ProjectManagement. But what I really miss, is a practical explanation of how to switch theory to reality. For example: The PMBOK defines 44 processes. Some of them have to be done one time (e.g. defining a Project Charter), but many process steps have to be done daily, weekly, monthly and with different participants. So, what I miss is a description how to organize all these processes during a concrete project including a project plan with all these process steps defined as meetings.
This book is a really good introduction to PM and it helps to understand every PMBOK process. But when trying to use this methodology in daily work, you dont know what steps to do with whom and when. I simply miss a kind of project calendar showing how to spread these processes over the timeline.