Description
I came to project management as an experienced engineer; I knew how to do my highly technical job and how to get work done within a highly matrixed, international company. What I didn’t know was how to perform the basic processes required to manage a project. You see, they seemed so simple as to be completely ignorable, and let’s be honest, with a graduate degree in physics, I was arrogant and dismissive. What could be so hard about laying out work on a timeline and calling it the project schedule? I’d like to say that I wised up quickly and realized what I didn’t know, but that’s not what happened. What happened was about four years of “learning by doing,” which really meant “learning while screwing things up.” Ironically, it was studying for the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification that woke me up to the best practices for executing some of the processes needed to effectively manage a project. For instance, it turned out that the real reason I had to engage in those epic battles with that popular scheduling software was because I didn’t know how to develop a comprehensive schedule in the first place. My frustration wasn’t caused by some evil software package; it was caused by my own ignorance. It turns out that there’s a very simple, systematic way to collect the information needed to build a good project schedule, and guess what? Once I mastered that method, those epic battles dwindled to the occasional hiccup. What I learned and, yes, I admit that I learned it the hard way, is that conquering a PM consists of two equal parts: mastery of these fundamental processes and your agility with interpersonal communication. Trust me, it’s significantly harder to improve your soft skills than it is to improve your capability to execute the fundamental processes of project management. These processes are straightforward and easy to grasp, requiring no advanced math and only slightly frightening software applications. The absolute easiest and fastest way to improve as a project manager is to focus on improving your grasp of the mechanics of project management.
This idea that you can dramatically improve your effectiveness by following these best practices is why I wrote this book. These processes are also surprisingly simple to understand. You won’t need a semester-long course on scheduling to get started or even to dramatically improve the next schedule you develop. Take the practice of managing project risks. Once you understand that there are really only five options for managing any risk, the hoopla and drama that surround risk management in many organizations boil down to a multiple-choice question.
In all honesty, this should have been my first book. You see, my first book Managing Projects in the Real World was all about navigating the people challenges of managing projects. Those are tough challenges, to be sure, but frankly you need to know what the heck you’re doing before you can make much headway dealing with a difficult stakeholder or crazy coworker. You really can’t respond to that insane request to pull in the schedule by 8 weeks if you don’t have a realistic execution plan to start with. In fact, there’s a pretty strong case to be made that you should focus on improving your project management mechanics before you deep dive into growing your soft skills. This book sets up the beginning project manager to do just that with a concise set of instructions and actionable advice on what to do and how to do it. It contains checklists for each phase of the project lifecycle which keep you on track and help you stay organized. The second half of the book is dedicated to how you do this stuff in the Real World, offering advice on how to navigate low and high PM maturity organizations. There are also some actionable ideas for where to go next once you’re comfortable with the mechanics of the job. In short, this is the book I wish I’d had when I first started out as a project manager, and I hope it helps those of you out there struggling to master your craft.