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Project Management: Two Books for Beginners |
The
Complete Idiot’s Guide to Project Management, 2d ed.
by Sunny Baker, Ph.D.
and Kim E. Baker; Alpha Books, 2000; 404 pages, $18.95
(paperback); ISBN 0-02-863920-0
Project Management for Dummies,
by Stanley E. Portny; Wiley
Publishing, Inc., 2001; 350 pages, $21.99 (paperback); ISBN
0-7645-5283-X
Reviewed by
Vernon J. Edwards
MS Word Version |
Buy or check prices on these books
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One of the big management
developments of the last decade was the growing interest in
project management. As a recognized organizational discipline
project management has been around since the 1950s, but interest
in it exploded during the 1990s when businesses like AT&T,
General Motors, IBM, Microsoft, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Blue
Cross Blue Shield and others invested large sums in professional
training for their employees. In response to the interest,
several American universities began offering degrees in project
management, including The George Washington University, Naval
Postgraduate School, Florida Institute of Technology,
Northwestern University, University of Alaska, University of
Maryland, and University of Texas, to name just a few.
A professional organization, the Project Management Institute (PMI),
was founded in 1965 and now has more than 100,000 members
worldwide (http://www.pmi.org/). It has developed a project
management “body of knowledge” (PMBOK), which is the basis for a
professional certification program. It has even developed a
special supplement to that body of knowledge for government
projects. IBM employs more than 5,000 PMI members and Hewlett
Packard employs nearly 2,000. AT&T, Blue Cross Blue Shield,
Motorola and other companies each employ more than 500, and
Microsoft employs more than 300. Unlike some management fads,
project management appears to be here to stay.
The Project Management Institute defines a project as “a
temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or
service.” According to PMI, organizational work can be grouped
into two categories: operations and projects. Both types of work
are performed by people, constrained by limited resources, and
must be planned, executed and controlled, but projects differ
from operations in that they are temporary and unique. Projects
managers must work within a “triple constraint” — quality, time
and budget, and it is the unique combination of the three
constraints which makes project management a special challenge.
In the world of government acquisition, many contract actions
are projects, whether the acquisition is a “recompete” of an
on-going service requirement, a contract for the development of
a new weapon system, or an OMB Circular A-76 public-private
competition.
Project management’s techniques for project initiation,
planning, execution, control and closeout can be powerful tools
for acquisition professionals. Boiled down to its essence,
project management is an approach to the organization and
management of work that is based on a set of well-defined
methods, such as work breakdown analysis, network scheduling,
risk analysis, change control and earned value management, and
personal skills, such as leadership, communication, negotiation
and conflict resolution. Used effectively, these methods and
skills make a big difference in project outcomes, especially in
a world in which few if any project managers have authority
commensurate with their responsibility. Since every acquisition
professional manages a project when he or she conducts an
acquisition, every acquisition professional should have at least
a working knowledge of project management thinking, methods and
skills.
You can take a class on project management — there are hundreds
of offerings — but its easier and less expensive to read a book
or two, at least at the outset. There is no shortage of books
about project management. A search at Amazon.Com for books with
“project management” in their title yielded 1,087 hits, ranging
from classics like Harold Kerzner’s Project Management: A
Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling, now
in its eighth edition, and Project Management: Strategic Design
and Implementation, by David Cleland and Lewis Ireland, now in
its fourth edition, to books that will almost certainly drop
from sight shortly after publication. Many of the titles are
devoted to specific kinds of projects — such as construction, IT
systems and software development, facilities operation,
manufacturing, arranging corporate events, architecture, and
weapon systems development — but there are many introductory
texts. There is a “ten minute guide,” a “little black book,” a
“portable MBA,” and a “pocket guide,” and there are “fact
books,” “primers,” “handbooks,” “toolkits,” — you name it. There
is even a novel about project management: The Deadline, by Tom
Demarco.
Fortunately, two relatively recent and very good books provide
thorough and easy-to-read introductions to project management:
Project Management for Dummies, by Stanley E. Portny and
The
Complete Idiot’s Guide to Project Management, 2d ed., by Sunny
and Kim E. Baker. Both books are organized around the main
phases of project management: initiation, planning, execution,
control and closeout, and both do a good job of discussing
project management skills (team-building, communications,
conflict resolution and leadership) and methods (work breakdown
analysis, scheduling, resource estimating and project
monitoring).
The ultimate test of any book about project management is how
well it describes the crucial processes of work breakdown
analysis and work breakdown structure development. These are the
most important tasks in project management and the most
difficult to explain, and both books provide clear explanations.
Both books also provide good introductions to network scheduling
and critical path analysis. Project Management for Dummies is
better on resource estimation, and only Project Management for
Dummies devotes any space to earned value analysis, which in my
opinion gives it an overall edge over the Idiot’s Guide.
However, the Idiot’s Guide devotes more space to subjects like
leadership, communication, conflict resolution and negotiation.
Both books include ample and clear graphics and both include
brief glossaries of project management terms.
In today’s flattened, empowered (some would say, undisciplined)
organizations, project management methods and skills increase
the likelihood of getting a job done well, on time and within
budget. Good project management is essential to the effective
conduct of a public-private competition under OMB Circular A-76,
especially now that the circular sets strict time limits for
completing a competition. Even an ordinary source selection
would benefit from the application of project management
methods. Acquisition professionals have much to gain by learning
at least the rudiments of project management, and these two
books are a good place to start the learning process.
Contracting officers as business managers? Here’s a good place
to start. |
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Vernon J. Edwards
is a researcher, writer, and teacher of
federal
contracting. Copyright © 2002 by Vernon J. Edwards |
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