Project Management For Dummies

Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Introduction -- About This Book -- Foolish Assumptions -- Icons Used in This Book -- Beyond the Book -- Where to Go from Here -- Part 1 Getting Started with Project Management -- Chapter 1 Project Management: The Key to Achieving Results -- Determining What Makes a Project a Project -- Understanding the three main components that define a project -- Recognizing the diversity of projects -- Describing the four phases of a project life cycle -- Defining Project Management -- Starting with the initiating processes -- Outlining the planning processes -- Examining the executing processes -- Surveying the monitoring and controlling processes -- Ending with the closing processes -- Knowing the Project Manager's Role -- Looking at the project manager's tasks -- Staving off excuses for not following a structured project-management approach -- Avoiding shortcuts -- Staying aware of other potential challenges -- Do You Have What It Takes to Be an Effective Project Manager? -- Questions -- Answer key -- Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 6 -- Chapter 2 Beginning the Journey: The Genesis of a Project -- Gathering Ideas for Projects -- Looking at information sources for potential projects -- Proposing a project in a business case -- Developing the Project Charter -- Performing a cost-benefit analysis -- Conducting a feasibility study -- Generating documents during the development of the project charter -- Deciding Which Projects to Move to the Second Phase of Their Life Cycle -- Chapter 3 Knowing Your Project's Stakeholders: Involving the Right People -- Understanding Your Project's Stakeholders -- Developing a Stakeholder Register -- Starting your stakeholder register -- Ensuring your stakeholder register is complete and up-to-date -- Using a stakeholder register template

Determining Whether Stakeholders Are Drivers, Supporters, or Observers -- Deciding when to involve your stakeholders -- Using different methods to involve your stakeholders -- Making the most of your stakeholders' involvement -- Displaying Your Stakeholder Register -- Confirming Your Stakeholders' Authority -- Assessing Your Stakeholders' Power and Interest -- Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 6 -- Chapter 4 Clarifying What You're Trying to Accomplish - And Why -- Defining Your Project with a Scope Statement -- Looking at the Big Picture: Explaining the Need for Your Project -- Figuring out why you're doing the project -- Drawing the line: Where your project starts and stops -- Stating your project's objectives -- Marking Boundaries: Project Constraints -- Working within limitations -- Dealing with needs -- Facing the Unknowns When Planning: Documenting Your Assumptions -- Presenting Your Scope Statement in a Clear and Concise Document -- Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 6 -- Chapter 5 Developing Your Game Plan: Getting from Here to There -- Divide and Conquer: Breaking Your Project into Manageable Chunks -- Thinking in detail -- Identifying necessary project work with a work breakdown structure -- Dealing with special situations -- Creating and Displaying Your Work Breakdown Structure -- Considering different schemes to create your WBS hierarchy -- Using one of two approaches to develop your WBS -- Categorizing your project's work -- Labeling your WBS entries -- Displaying your WBS in different formats -- Improving the quality of your WBS -- Using templates -- Identifying Risks While Detailing Your Work -- Documenting What You Need to Know about Your Planned Project Work -- Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 6 -- Part 2 Planning Time: Determining When and How Much

Chapter 6 You Want This Project Done When? -- Picture This: Illustrating a Work Plan with a Network Diagram -- Defining a network diagram's elements -- Drawing a network diagram -- Analyzing a Network Diagram -- Reading a network diagram -- Interpreting a network diagram -- Working with Your Project's Network Diagram -- Determining precedence -- Using a network diagram to analyze a simple example -- Developing Your Project's Schedule -- Taking the first steps -- Avoiding the pitfall of backing in to your schedule -- Meeting an established time constraint -- Applying different strategies to arrive at your picnic in less time -- Estimating Activity Duration -- Determining the underlying factors -- Considering resource characteristics -- Finding sources of supporting information -- Improving activity duration estimates -- Displaying Your Project's Schedule -- Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 6 -- Chapter 7 Establishing Whom You Need, How Much of Their Time, and When -- Getting the Information You Need to Match People to Tasks -- Deciding what skills and knowledge team members must have -- Representing team members' skills, knowledge, and interests in a skills matrix -- Estimating Needed Commitment -- Using a human resources matrix -- Identifying needed personnel in a human resources matrix -- Estimating required work effort -- Factoring productivity, efficiency, and availability into work-effort estimates -- Reflecting efficiency when you use historical data -- Accounting for efficiency in personal work-effort estimates -- Ensuring Your Project Team Members Can Meet Their Resource Commitments -- Planning your initial allocations -- Resolving potential resource overloads -- Coordinating assignments across multiple projects -- Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 6

Chapter 8 Planning for Other Resources and Developing the Budget -- Determining Non-Personnel Resource Needs -- Making Sense of the Dollars: Project Costs and Budgets -- Looking at different types of project costs -- Recognizing the three stages of a project budget -- Refining your budget as you move through your project's phases -- Determining project costs for a detailed budget estimate -- Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 6 -- Chapter 9 Venturing into the Unknown: Dealing with Risk -- Defining Risk and Risk Management -- Focusing on Risk Factors and Risks -- Recognizing risk factors -- Identifying risks -- Assessing Risks: Probability and Consequences -- Gauging the likelihood of a risk -- Estimating the extent of the consequences -- Getting Everything under Control: Managing Risk -- Choosing the risks you want to manage -- Developing a risk-management strategy -- Communicating about risks -- Preparing a Risk-Management Plan -- Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 6 -- Part 3 Group Work: Putting Your Team Together -- Chapter 10 Aligning the Key Players for Your Project -- Defining Three Organizational Environments -- The functional structure -- The projectized structure -- The matrix structure -- Recognizing the Key Players in a Matrix Environment -- The project manager -- Project team members -- Functional managers -- The project owner -- The project sponsor -- Upper management -- Working Successfully in a Matrix Environment -- Creating and continually reinforcing a team identity -- Getting team-member commitment -- Eliciting support from other people in the environment -- Heading off common problems before they arise -- Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 6 -- Chapter 11 Defining Team Members' Roles and Responsibilities -- Outlining the Key Roles -- Distinguishing authority, responsibility, and accountability

Understanding the difference between authority and responsibility -- Making Project Assignments -- Delving into delegation -- Sharing responsibility -- Holding people accountable - even when they don't report to you -- Picture This: Depicting Roles with a Responsibility Assignment Matrix -- Introducing the elements of a RAM -- Reading a RAM -- Developing a RAM -- Ensuring your RAM is accurate -- Dealing with Micromanagement -- Realizing why a person micromanages -- Gaining a micromanager's trust -- Working well with a micromanager -- Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 6 -- Chapter 12 Starting Your Project Team Off on the Right Foot -- Finalizing Your Project's Participants -- Are you in? Confirming your team members' participation -- Assuring that others are on board -- Filling in the blanks -- Developing Your Team -- Reviewing the approved project plan -- Developing team and individual goals -- Specifying team-member roles -- Defining your team's operating processes -- Supporting the development of team-member relationships -- Resolving conflicts -- All together now: Helping your team become a smooth-functioning unit -- Laying the Groundwork for Controlling Your Project -- Selecting and preparing your tracking systems -- Establishing schedules for reports and meetings -- Setting your project's baseline -- Hear Ye, Hear Ye! Announcing Your Project -- Setting the Stage for Your Post-Project Evaluation -- Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 6 -- Part 4 Steering the Ship: Managing Your Project to Success -- Chapter 13 Tracking Progress and Maintaining Control -- Holding On to the Reins: Project Control -- Establishing Project Management Information Systems -- The clock's ticking: Monitoring schedule performance -- All in a day's work: Monitoring work effort -- Follow the money: Monitoring expenditures

Putting Your Control Process into Action

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