Nick Graham is an experienced project practitioner, trainer and author, with his clear explanations helped by also being a qualified teacher. His training work has taken him worldwide, and he has worked with the public, private and not-for-profit sectors. Nick is also the author of Project Management Checklists For Dummies.

Introduction 1

About This Book 2

Foolish Assumptions 2

Icons Used in This Book 3

Beyond the Book 4

Where to Go from Here 4

Part 1: Understanding Projects and What You Want to Achieve 5

Chapter 1: Success in Project Management 7

Taking on a Project 7

Avoiding the Pitfalls 8

Deciding Whether the Job is a Project 10

Understanding the four control areas 10

Recognising the diversity of projects 12

Understanding the four stages of a project 13

Defining the Project Manager's Role 15

Looking at the Project Manager's tasks 16

Opposing opposition 17

Avoiding 'shortcuts' 18

Deciding On Your Approach 19

Chapter 2: Thinking Through the Life of Your Project 21

Using a Set Approach 21

Breaking the Project Down into Stages 22

Appreciating the advantages of stages 23

Deciding on the number of delivery stages 24

Understanding the Four Main Stages 25

Starting the project 25

The planning stage - organising and preparing 28

The delivery stages - carrying out the work 32

The closure stage 36

Chapter 3: Defining the Scope and Producing a Business Case 37

Defining the Scope 38

Managing expectations and avoiding disappointment 39

Challenging the scope 39

Understanding the dimensions of scope 40

Being clear 40

Considering the requirements 41

Producing a Business Case 41

Getting to grips with the basic contents 42

Keeping the Business Case up to date 42

Figuring out why you're doing the project 43

Understanding project justification 44

Understanding benefits 45

Writing the Business Case 49

Complying with organisational standards 50

Going Back to the Scope 50

Challenging the existing scope 51

Going the second mile 51

Getting to Grips with Techniques 52

Calculating return on investment 52

Understanding cost-benefit analysis 52

Chapter 4: Knowing Your Project's Stakeholders 55

Managing Stakeholders 56

Identifying stakeholders - the 'who' 57

Analysing the stakeholders - the 'where' 60

Understanding positions - the 'why' 62

Deciding action - the 'what' 63

Working with stakeholders - the 'how' 65

Planning the work - the 'when' 66

Handling Opposition 67

Solving the problems 67

Focusing on the common areas 67

Understanding that you're a threat 67

Spotting facts and emotions 69

Overriding the opposition 70

Handling Multiple-Stakeholder Projects 71

Getting multiple approvals 71

Developing management strategies 71

Part 2: Planning Time: Determining What, When and How Much 73

Chapter 5: Planning with Deliverables First 75

Seeing the Logic of Product Planning 76

Thinking 'product' before thinking 'task' 76

Understanding the problems of an activity focus 78

Knowing What a Product Is - and Isn't 79

Finding Good Product Names 80

Using a Business Project Example 81

Identifying the products 81

Developing a sequence 82

Defining the products 87

Using a Structured Product List 88

Unleashing the Power of the Work Flow Diagram 91

Using the Work Flow Diagram for risk 92

Using the Work Flow Diagram for control 92

Using the Work Flow Diagram to show stages 93

Using the Work Flow for progress reporting 93

Getting a picture of the project 95

Chapter 6: Planning the Activities 97

Moving From Products to Activities 98

Having multiple tasks to build a product 98

Listing the activities or tasks 99

Drawing Up a First Activity Network 101

Seeing how you build up an Activity Network 101

Using the Work Flow Diagram 103

Putting in the time durations 105

Calculating the length of the project 107

Understanding Float and Its Impact 109

Identifying the Critical Path 111

Watching the critical path 112

Finding a split critical path 113

Being More Precise with Dependencies 114

Understanding dependency types 114

Staying in touch with reality 117

Thinking a bit more about sequences 118

Working with the Activity Network 120

Working back to meet end dates 121

Avoiding backing into your schedule 122

Going for Gantt 123

Estimating Activity Durations 125

Getting the best information 126

Using estimating techniques 127

Putting a health warning on estimates 128

Chapter 7: Looking At Staff Resources 131

Seeing Why You Need to Plan Staff Use 132

Dealing with resource conflicts 132

Making sure that people are available 133

Monitoring use of staff on the project 135

Matching People to Tasks 135

Working out the skill sets and knowledge that you need on the teams 135

Growing your people 136

Identifying skills sets 137

Honing Your Task Duration Estimates 138

Documenting your estimates 138

Factors in activity timing and estimates 139

Estimating required work effort 140

Factoring in productivity 141

Taking care with historical data 144

Accounting for availability 145

Smoothing the Resource 146

Checking for resource conflict 146

Resolving resource conflicts - the steps 147

Co-ordinating assignments across multiple projects 149

Chapter 8: Planning for Other Resources and Developing the Budget 151

Determining Physical Resource Needs 152

Identifying resource needs 152

Understanding physical resources 154

Thinking a bit more about timing 155

Preparing a Budget 156

Looking at different types of project costs 157

Developing a project budget at three levels 159

Creating a detailed budget estimate 160

Refining your budget through the stages 162

Avoiding drowning people in detail 164

Chapter 9: Planning at Different Times and Levels 165

Putting the Main Structure in Place 166

Deciding on the stages 166

Holding a Stage Gate 168

Working with Planning Levels 169

Drawing up new plans 170

Keeping higher level plans up to date 172

Planning at more than one level at once 172

Chapter 10: Dealing with Risk and Uncertainty 175

Understanding Risks and Risk Management 176

Seeing why you need risk management 177

Managing, not necessarily avoiding, risk 177

Keeping people informed 178

Keeping risk in focus throughout the project 180

Working Through the Risk Cycle 180

Identifying a risk and its trigger event(s) 182

(Re)analyse the risk and check existing actions 183

Deciding risk management action(s) 189

Add/modify risk management in the plans 193

Take planned action(s) and monitor the risk 194

Documenting Risk 195

Risk Plan 195

Risk Log 196

Getting Some Help from Techniques 197

Ishikawa (fishbone) diagram 197

Work Flow Diagram 198

Risk Checklist 198

Decision tree 198

Chapter 11: Controlling Quality 201

Understanding the Effects of Getting Quality Wrong 203

Understanding the impact of poor quality 203

Avoiding the cost of unnecessarily high quality 204

Defining Quality 205

Striking the Quality Balance 205

Balancing quality against project effort (and more) 205

Thinking through what quality level you need 206

Identifying when quality levels are mandatory 208

Spotting Quality Game-Playing and Working to Prevent It 208

The quality level game and a guilty conscience 209

When formality and auditing means nothing 210

Typical game players 211

Achieving a Culture of Quality 211

Communicating quality requirements and procedures 212

Explaining the attitude to error 212

Celebrating when errors are found 213

Getting On Top of Quality in Your Project 214

Drawing up an effective Quality Plan 214

Building the foundation with good product definition 216

Using powerful yet simple logs 217

Auditing quality effectively 218

Delivering At the Right Level 218

Specifying the right sort of testing 219

Using the right people 219

Reviewing Products 220

Using informal review (peer level checking) 220

Using formal review 221

Part 3: Putting Your Management Team Together 225

Chapter 12: Organising the Project 227

Designing the Project Organisation 227

Understanding it's about roles, not jobs 229

Getting to grips with project roles 230

Looking at the roles 230

Influencing the selection of PSG roles 239

Defining Organisational Structures 239

The projectised structure 239

The matrix structure 240

Taking note of the structure 241

Chapter 13: Working With Teams and Specialists 243

Looking At the Team in Context 245

Working with Team Leaders 246

Accepting That People Are Different 248

Using the Controller-Analyst Matrix 248

Building in or avoiding team conflict 249

Using the model on the fly 250

Thinking About Suitable Team Members 251

Considering Performance 252

Identifying the performance progression 252

Monitoring performance 253

Maximising performance 253

Working with Senior Staff 254

Being secure in your role 255

Calling in the heavy guns 255

Working with Technical Specialists 256

Finding a...