The Little Black Book of Project Management.pdf

Little Black Book of Project Management, The

by Michael C. Thomsett

AMACOM Books

ISBN: 0814477321 Pub Date: 01/01/90

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Introduction

Chapter 1—Organizing for the Long Term

Chapter 2—Creating the Plan

Chapter 3—Choosing the Project Team

Chapter 4—The Project Budget

Chapter 5—Establishing a Schedule

Chapter 6—The Rules of Flowcharting

Chapter 7—The Project Flowchart

Chapter 8—Supporting Documentation

Chapter 9—Project Review

Chapter 10—The Communication Challenge

Chapter 11—Project Management and Your Career

Appendix A

Index

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Little Black Book of Project Management, The

by Michael C. Thomsett

AMACOM Books

ISBN: 0814477321 Pub Date: 01/01/90

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Advanced Search

Search this book:

Table of Contents

Introduction

Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future .

—Neils Bohr

Imagine this situation: You’ve just been given the job of completing a very large project. Your

sources are limited, your budget is very small, and your deadline is very short. The precise goals

of the job have not been defined as well as you’d like, and you don’t know where to start.

This situation challenges your management skill on many levels. You’ll have to ask for a

definition of just what you’re expected to achieve. Then you’ll need to plan well enough so that

you will accomplish the desired result, by the deadline and within budget. Rarely will you be

given a well-defined, fully budgeted project and asked merely to pilot your resources through to

the end result. More likely you will be given an assignment that includes nothing beyond the

demand for a generalized end result. The rest is up to you.

This Little Black Book shows you how to take charge of a big project, define it, and then break it down into

smaller, more manageable phases. You will learn how to control a budget and schedule and lead a project

team through to successful completion. You will find out how to anticipate problems and plan for them during

the various project phases. And you will discover methods for establishing clear objectives for your project,

even when they are not defined at the point of assignment.

Because it’s a long-term process, project management causes even well-organized managers to experience

difficulty. But if you are accustomed to controlling routine work in your own department, you already

understand recurring workload cycles, staffing limitations, and budgetary restraints—the same issues you’ll

confront with projects.

However, the context is different: First, a project is nonrecurring, so problems and solutions are not matters of

routine; second, unlike the limitations on your department’s range of tasks, a project often crosses

departmental and authority lines; third, a project is planned and organized over several months, whereas

recurring tasks are projected ahead only for a few days or weeks.

Managing a project doesn’t require any skills you don’t already possess; you will employ the same

management skills you use elsewhere. The planning, organizing, and execution steps just require greater

flexibility and a long-term view than your recurring tasks do, and the project is an exception to the daily or

monthly routine.

Running a project is like starting up a new department. What distinguishes both activities from your other

tasks is that there’s no historical budget, no predictable pattern to the problems or resistance points, and no

cycle on which to base today’s actions.

Think of this Little Black Book as the foundation of the project structure you’ll create. That structure will take

on a style, character, and arrangement of its own, but it must rest on a solid base of organizational skills,

definition, and control. This book will show you how to take charge of even the most complex project and

proceed with confidence in yourself and your project team. But protect this book, and be sure you can trust

those who might see you reading it. Keep it locked up in your desk or briefcase, and never leave it out in the

open where it may be borrowed permanently. This is your secret project tool; guard it well.

Table of Contents

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Little Black Book of Project Management, The

by Michael C. Thomsett

AMACOM Books

ISBN: 0814477321 Pub Date: 01/01/90

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Previous Table of Contents Next

Chapter 1

Organizing for the Long Term

Every moment spent planning saves three or four in execution .

—Crawford Greenwalt

The newly hired mail room employee noticed an elderly gentleman sitting in a corner and slowly

sorting interoffice envelopes .

“Who’s that?” he asked the supervisor .

“Oh, that’s Charley. He’s been with the company for about forty years.”

“And he never made it out of the mail room?” the employee asked .

“He did, but he asked to be transferred here—after spending several years as a project

manager.”

Dread. That’s a common reaction to being given a project assignment. Thought of as the corporate version of

a root canal, a project is often seen as something to avoid rather than to seek.

But once you discover that the job of organizing and executing a project is not all that difficult, the

assignment will take on a different character. Instead of a difficult, if not impossible, task, it will become an

interesting challenge to your organizational skills—perhaps it will serve as an outlet for your creativity or a

way to demonstrate your skill—even as an excellent forum for developing your leadership abilities.

The secret is not in learning new skills but in applying the skills you already have, but in a new arena. The

project is probaby an exception to your normal routine. You need to operate with an eye to a longer-term

deadline than you have in the weekly or monthly cycle you’re more likely to experience in your department.

Of course, some managers operate projects routinely, and are accustomed to dealing with a unique set of

problems, restrictions, and deadlines in each case. For example, engineers, contractors, or architects move

from one project to another, often involving circumstances never encountered before. Still, they apply the

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