Managing Project Scope: Shortcuts to success

PREFACE

When I was asked to put together a second edition of Project Management in the Real World, I wondered how much of the wisdom I had gathered for the first edition was out of date. Surely the shortcuts hadn’t changed that much in six years – good project management practice was still good project management practice. I was wrong.

In the last few years, lots of things have changed. A global recession forced businesses to rethink how they deliver more projects with fewer resources. Keeping ahead of the curve became more important. The job of a project manager morphed from someone who was paid to get things done to someone who contributed effectively to business strategy through delivery. Project Management Offices became a more mature part of many businesses, helping to standardise and improve practices, and stop the loss of organisational knowledge. The role of social media tools for branding and communication grew beyond my expectations – and I was an early adopter of many of them.

Consequently, it has been possible to fully revise and update this edition. Shortcuts to Success: Project Management in the Real World won’t teach you how to be a project manager. It’s not going to show you how to set up your first project, walk you through it and see you out the other end with all the benefits realised. There are plenty of other project management books that follow the project life cycle with chapters on project definition, initiation, execution, closure and so on. This book is different.

It’s for people who already know that a project has a beginning, a middle and an end and want to take project management further. It’s for people who know the theory and feel there must be an easier way to get things done. It’s over 250 years of project management experience distilled into 241 pages so you can see how other people run their projects outside the management texts and research papers: how projects get done in the real world.

The book is organised into five sections: managing the project budgets, scope, teams, plans and yourself as project manager. Wherever you are in your project life cycle you should be able to easily find information relevant to the particular situation you find yourself in.

Each of the five sections is divided into short chapters which explore discrete elements of the business of project management. Each chapter includes an anecdote from a manager who has been there and done it or a case study from a project with a valuable lesson to be learnt. Some names and project settings have been changed or disguised at the request of interviewees, but many of them have given permission for me to share their details and those of their projects. In addition, each chapter covers one learning point which you can put into practice immediately. The idea is that from reading about other people’s experiences and a little bit of theory you will understand both why and how things can be done. Think of the book as your personal mentor, and an opportunity to learn from others.

Dip into the chapters at random and pick a section or make your way methodically through the section most relevant to where you are in your project at the moment. If a topic particularly grabs you, flick through the further reading suggestions and references to find ways to take it