DAVID I.CLELAND – PROJECT MANAGEMENT (4TH ED.)

The first book to truly apply the theory, processes, practices, and techniques of project management to strategic planning is this one. Risk management, earned value, project recovery, project maturity models, partnering, and PM certification are new to this edition.

Project Management: Strategic Design and Implementation, Fourth Edition, by David I. Cleland and Lewis R. Ireland, provides contemporary evidence that both change and improvement are the natural order of things in project. The new edition has a whole new look and feel. The format of the authors’ previous collaborative success, Project Manager’s Portable Handbook, has decimally numbered paragraphs for structure and bullet lists for detail. Content that is modularly organized and easily accessible for readers is a result of this form of layout and presentation. The authors have improved individual chapters by adding a brief introduction that outlines the central points of the chapter and warms up readers for what follows. Each chapter now concludes with four additional sections: a listing of additional sources of information in the form of a generously annotated bibliography, a listing of project management principles that summarize chapter content in pithy statements of enduring, universal value, and a brief, descriptive case study that illuminates chapter content. The book consists of 22 chapters divided into seven parts that move forward from history through current practice to a view of the future. The new edition provides a guiding graphic that appears at the head of each chapter as a structural map showing readers where they are and maintaining a sense of global reference throughout their journey through the text. The content of this edition is very similar to the previous edition, as most sequential editions do. This is not a simple change of text to get a new publication date. It is an improvement in both form and substance. The technical material has been rearranged to make it more logical and readable and to reflect recent research. There is a chapter on strategic issues in project management. The old material is still there, but the new design is more appealing in appearance and facilitates in function. A timely discussion of project portfolio management and references to 10 articles from June 2001 has been added by the authors. Combining previous chapters on project organization and authority into a single chapter presents a complete view of these interrelated topics. The previous chapter on working with project teams has been changed into a discussion of effective project teamwork that is more action oriented and that prescribes specific steps to take when building project teams. Project management maturity is addressed in a new chapter. The history of maturity models, specific models developed by the Software Engineering Institute and the Federal Aviation Administration, and two general approaches to model development are briefly discussed by the authors. They give a tool for assessing project management maturity and describe the contributing roles of benchmarking and business intelligence. While no cookbook solution to maturity management currently exists, the information in this chapter leaves readers well informed and well armed to deal with this important emerging issue on their own as individual project needs demand. There is a chapter on earned value management systems. Cleland and Ireland address concepts, meaning, and application concisely and completely. EVMS is not a tool for all projects, that’s what they temper the unique and essential utility of EVMS with. A disciplined management process is required. An EVMS effort to frustration and failure will be condemned by a poorly defined project. Project Management: Strategic Design and Implementation, Fourth Edition isn’t the last word on project management theory and practice. The evolutionary nature of the domain makes it unlikely that a book will ever be written. It sets a standard against which others may be measured in the future and raises the bar for books of its kind. There is a project management journal.

David I.Cleland is the author of Project Management (4th Ed.), Free Project Management (4th Ed.), and Project Management (4th Ed.) The fourth edition of Torrent, Project Management. Project management is reviewed in the fourth edition. Group buy.