Publisher Description

It's a jungle out there and project managers are fighting to survive… With countless man-hours clocked and billions of dollars spent every year on project tools, the success rate for projects remains astonishingly low. So what's the solution?Introducing TACTILE Management™, a people-centric system that works in conjunction with an organization's existing processes. Based on the seven characteristics of high-performance project teams transparency, accountability, communication, trust, integrity, leadership, and execution the book shows project managers how to:Take project teams out of their functional silos and transform them into a powerful, integrated force Balance the expectations of customers, management, and project teams with the technical requirements of cost, schedule, and performance Apply practical phase-by-phase project guidance to real-life situations Avoid or minimize possible pitfallsEvery successful project involves someone in the trenches who has the people skills to match process with the capability of his team and organization. This innovative book shows readers how to make the most of their people… and ensure project success.

Notes

Shows project managers how to use their people and teams effectively.

Back Cover

" Succeeding in the Project Management Jungle addresses a subject that doesn't get enough coverage in management books. It's a practical and definitive work that will enable you to get results from your people no matter how many solid or dotted lines fill up your organization chart." -- John Berra, Senior Advisor and past Chairman, Emerson Process Management It's a jungle out there for project managers, and no amount of Lean, Agile, or Six Sigma finessing is going to tame a massive project that's threatening to unravel. No matter what process you've got in place, there's one key ingredient that can make or break your success: managing the people. Introducing TACTILE Management(tm), a people-based project management system that works in conjunction with your organization's existing processes. Based on the seven char

Author Biography

DOUG RUSSELL, PMP, is currently Director of Engineering at a Fortune 200 company. He has more than 25 years of experience in high-technology project management for commercial and government organizations

Table of Contents

Contents Acknowledgments Introduction PART I:The Project Management Jungle Chapter 1: Welcome to the Project Management Jungle Escape Is Possible from the Project Management Jungle What Creates the Project Management Jungle? TACTILE Management™ Defined Succeeding in the Project Management Jungle PART II:The Foundation of TACTILE Management Chapter 2: The Seven Characteristics of Successful Projects Transparency Accountability Communication Trust Integrity Leadership That Drives Needed Change Execution Results PART III: Mastering the Expectations of Key Stakeholders Chapter 3: Expectations Management High-Level Stakeholder Expectations Case Study: The R.101 Project Traditional Project Constraints with Stakeholder Expectations Triple Expectations Pyramid Putting It All Together Chapter 4: The Triple Expectations Pyramid and Your Customer Customer Expectations: Scope Customer Expectations: Cost Customer Expectations: Schedule Chapter 5: The Triple Expectations Pyramid and Your Management Two Toxic Management Styles Your Management's Expectations: Scope Your Management's Expectations: Schedule Your Management's Expectations: Cost Chapter 6: The Triple Expectations Pyramid and Your Team Your Team's Expectations: Scope Your Team's Expectations: Schedule Your Team's Expectations: Cost Using the Triple Expectations Pyramid PART IV:Avoiding Pitfalls in the Five KeyAreas of a Project Chapter 7: Initiating PM Assignment Project Charter Project Scope Preplanning the Plan Avoiding Toxic Management in Initiation Case Study: The Path Less Taken Chapter 8: Planning Creating the Initial (Baseline) Plan Historical Planning Approaches TACTILE Planning Approach Project Management Plan Basics: Scope, Time, Cost, and Risk Management Finishing the Plan: Quality Assurance, Human Resources, Communication, Procurement, and Integration Management Discovering and Addressing Needed Information Until Approval Flexibly Looking Ahead Avoiding Toxic Management in Planning Case Study: The Path Less Taken Chapter 9: Executing Executing to the Plan TACTILE Execution Approach Meetings Controlling Change Control Selling New Baselines Learning How to Win Case Study: The Path Less Taken Chapter 10: Monitoring, Controlling, and Reporting Monitoring (Don't Even Try To) Control Reporting Case Study: The Path Less Taken Chapter 11: Closing Properly Close All Project Activities Capture Data for Organizational Learning Ensure Personal Growth Case Study: The Path Less Taken PARTV: LivingWell in the Project Management Jungle Chapter 12: "From Chaos comes Creativity, from Order Comes Profit" Bibliography Index

Long Description

Despite the investment of time and money, companies are struggling to ensure their projects succeed. In his innovative book, author Doug Russell shows readers how the people-centric TACTILE Management (tm) system maximizes an organization's current processes by cutting through the technical weeds to emphasize individual skills and the value of collaboration. Using the seven characteristics of high-performance project teams--transparency, accountability, communication, trust, integrity, leadership, and execution--Succeeding in the Project Management Jungle teaches readers how to: take project teams out of their functional silos and transform them into a powerful, integrated force; balance the expectations of customers, management, and project teams with the technical requirements of cost, schedule, and performance; avoid or minimize possible pitfalls; and much more. With countless man-hours clocked and billions of dollars spent every year on project tools, companies can't afford the astonishingly slow success rate of most businesses' endeavors. This phase-by-phase project guide shows readers how to apply invaluable people soft skills in real-life situations to ensure every phase of the project cycle is a success.

Excerpt from Book

Chapter 1 Welcome to the Project Management Jungle IT IS 1:15 A.M., a Tuesday night like any other. A lone light burns inside a beautiful Tudor-style custom home on the edge of the Northwest Hills in Austin, Texas. Inside, yet another busy project manager struggles to complete his work for the day, entangled within the project management jungle. In this unrelenting, always-on, pressure- cooker environment, he juggles hundreds of e-mails per day, endless meetings that accomplish little, stakeholders with impossible expectations, and new problems that should have been foreseen before they consumed additional money, resources, and attention. His two remaining tasks for the night are to finish up preparations for his monthly ops review with management, scheduled for the next morning, and to generate an approach on how to get his design and test functional teams to work better together. The two teams have been fighting with each other for weeks and are doing little real work to solve their issues. That meeting is tomorrow, as well, "sometime after 5:00 P.M." Down the hall, his two gorgeous children, five and three years old, slumber away. He guiltily resolves, yet again, to take them to the park on Saturday. Or perhaps it will have to be Sunday. He did at least spend a few minutes with them earlier that evening, tossing a small basketball, before they went off to bed and he off to his Mac. His wife, hoping to spend some time with him watching a DVD together, chatting about the kids, or talking about the possibility of a vacation, has given up and gone to bed. He sends several e-mails and then, cursing to himself, realizes that he has misplaced a key notebook. Quietly, he slips into the master bedroom to check a stack beside the bed. He glances fondly down at his dozing wife as he finds the notebook and sighs as he leaves the room. He wishes there were another way to easily lead his large project group in the complex task at hand. So many issues, he muses. Got to make it happen, though. Winners do what is necessary to win. With one last look at his wife, he thinks firmly, There will be time for catching up on all this when the project is over. His cell phone rings from the study. Frustrated that he cannot finish his current tasks, he hurries to answer. It is his Asian customer, full of questions about the latest status report. Wearily, he tries to explain. He can tell his customer is not very happy with the answers. Forty-five minutes later--not really done yet--he stops for the day, noting e-mail traffic coming in from all over the world, including places where it is even later at night. Exhausted, he falls into bed, trying not to make too much commotion. He rolls over and almost immediately drops into sleep. The alarm will go off in four short hours, and he will do it all over again. Sound familiar? Welcome to the project management jungle! Escape Is Possible from the Project Management Jungle You may think that immense stress and a large time investment are the price of success as a project leader. But there is another way. In the past few years, I have led multiple teams in several companies to success without working excessive hours and while experiencing much less stress than our friend here. This book will help you do the same on your projects without going to lengthy weeklong training classes or spending massive dollars on a new process. Sadly, success in the project management jungle is too often not the end result of all the effort involved. Enter "project success rate" into a Web search engine and the results are disturbing, with many studies quoting success rates of only 30 to 50 percent. Of course, the majority of studies look at myriad teams in a variety of industries and applications, and each study has its own definition of success, making it hard to find a baseline for a clear picture. Succeeding in the Project Management Jungle is aimed primarily at active project managers who work with knowledge worker teams. The term knowledge worker, of course, covers a lot of territory. After all, virtually everyone in today''s workplace works with some sort of data. We will focus on knowledge worker teams employed in information technology (IT), software, hardware, systems design, and other engineering or technically related applications. These professionals struggle in the project management jungle every day. Read on to learn about five key factors that create this jungle environment. Then keep reading, and by the end of this book you will have learned how to thrive there.

Description for Bookstore

It's a jungle out there and project managers are fighting to survive….With countless man-hours clocked and billions of dollars spent every year on project tools, the success rate for projects remains astonishingly low. So what's the solution? Introducing TACTILE Management™, a people-centric system that works in conjunction with an organization's existing processes. Based on the seven characteristics of high-performance project teams-transparency, accountability, communication, trust, integrity, leadership, and execution-the book shows project managers how to: Take project teams out of their functional silos and transform them into a powerful, integrated force Balance the expectations of customers, management, and project teams with the technical requirements of cost, schedule, and performance Apply practical phase-by-phase project guidance to real-life situations Avoid or minimize possible pitfalls And more Every successful project involves someone in the trenches who has the people skills to match process with the capability of his team and organization. This innovative book shows readers how to make the most of their people…and ensure project success.

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