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Introduction
Projects have been around since ancient times. Noah building the ark, Leonardo da Vinci painting the Mona Lisa, J.R.R. Tolkien writing The Hobbit, Moderna and Pfizer developing their COVID-19 vaccines — all projects. And as you know, these were all masterful successes. Well, the products were a spectacular success, even if schedules and resource budgets were drastically overrun!
Why, then, is the topic of project management of such great interest today? The answer is simple: The audience has changed and the stakes are higher.
Historically, projects were large, complex undertakings. The first project to use modern project management techniques — the Polaris weapons system in the early 1950s — was a technical and administrative nightmare. Teams of specialists planned and tracked the myriad of research, development, and production activities. They produced mountains of paper to document the intricate work. As a result, people started to view project management as a highly technical discipline with confusing charts and graphs; they saw it as inordinately specialist-driven and definitely off-limits for the common person!
Because of the growing array of huge, complex, and technically challenging projects in today’s world, people who want to devote their careers to planning and managing those projects are vital to their successes. Over the past 30 to 35 years, the number of projects in the regular workplace has skyrocketed. Projects of all types and sizes are now the way that organizations accomplish their work.
At the same time, a new breed of project manager has emerged. This new breed may not have set career goals to become project managers — many among them don’t even consider themselves to be project managers, at least not as their primary role. But they do know they must successfully manage projects to move ahead in their careers. Clearly, project management has become a critical skill, not a career choice.
Even though these people realize they need special tools, techniques, and knowledge to handle their new types of assignments, they may not be able to devote large amounts of time to acquiring them without adversely impacting other responsibilities, which is where this book comes into play. This book is devoted to this silent majority of project managers.