Absolute beginner's guide to project management

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.-- Part V, "Accelerating the Learning Curve...Even More," provides experienced insights and tips on making better use of MS Project, managing specific real-life project situations, and on many hot project management topics to further accelerate the knowledge base and skill level of the new project manager.--

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 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. ; To emphasize the importance of project "leadership" versus just project "management." ; ; Approach ; Consistent with the Absolute Beginner's Guide series, this book uses 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. ; A fun, easy-to-read, practical 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 minutes). ; 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. ; ; 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. Because 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