Project Management: Survival and Success

Preface
If I’ve learned anything from my many years as a project manager, it’s that there is always something more to learn about
managing projects. This holds true at every level of project management practice, but it is especially relevant for those company and government managers and supervisors who are tasked by their organizations to perform double duty as project managers.
Such practice often produces serious repercussions, either in a form detrimental to an organization’s reputation or bottom line, but more often adversely impacting people’s careers.
Project Management: Survival and Success addresses the weaknesses and shortcomings of the untrained and/or inexperienced project manager. It views project activity from the perspective of the manager or supervisor who is assigned by their organization to manage a project in addition to his/her normal duties, and explores the four classes of project managers: First, those who are untrained and inexperienced; second, those who are untrained but have some experience; third, those who are formally trained but have no experience; and fourth, those who are formally trained and well experienced.
It also discusses what are considered to be the three major categories of projects:
1) industrial: requiring massive capital investment, and meticulous oversight of finance, progress and quality (as in high-end construction and engineering endeavors);
2) manufacturing: aimed at producing an end product of some consequence or complexity (such as IT software iterations, ships, planes or automobiles); and 3) managerial: projects that arise out of organizational need (building additions and renovations, new equipment installs, department relocations, computerization of operations, landscaping… the list is endless).
This text will un-complicate the project management process and provide direction to ad hoc (sometimes referred to as
“accidental”) project managers, furthering their understanding and involvement in the profession through referenced examples of actual performed project work. Though the focus of the work deals with the evolution of the incidental project manager (from novice to competent), their fellow project stakeholders (sponsors, customers, team members, et al.) can benefit from the instruction and advice offered herein as well.