Book Description
Solid project management skills are in especially high demand today as an increasing number of companies have refocused their attention on the fundamentals of project management, demanding more from their project managers than ever before. If you are considering a career in project management or simply wish to expand your understanding of general project management principles, this book is for you. An all new addition to the popular and proven JumpStart series, this title offers simple, tangible explanations to clarify a complicated topic. Perhaps this book will even serve as a starting point for you to pursue advanced project management certifications such as PMP. If so, Project Management JumpStart may prove to be the perfect precursor to Sybex's best-selling PMP: Project Management Professional Study Guide (ISBN: 0782141064).


From the Back Cover
Prepare for a Project Management Career-Fast! Project Management JumpStart gives you the solid grounding you need to approach a career in project management with confidence. The basic skills of a successful project manager Creating project schedules and determining project budgets Winning the support of department managers Monitoring project progress, resources, and budgets Communication and negotiation skills Tips for motivating people who don't work for you Effective documentation skills for essential project management documents


About the Author
Kim Heldman, PMP, has over 10 years of experience in project management. She is the Director of the Project Management Office for the Department of Revenue, State of Colorado-and author of the best-selling PMP: Project Management Professional Study Guide by Sybex.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
If you￯﾿ﾽre going to reengineer your entire organization around ad hoc, short-term projects, you￯﾿ﾽd better have people who know how to run projects well. And when, according to Standish Group, only 28 percent of IT projects meet ￯﾿ﾽbasic￯﾿ﾽ standards of success, we￯﾿ﾽve clearly got a long way to go.

Smart big companies are building project management offices (often, leveraging resources they first organized for Y2K). Smart people are learning project management on their own, without being asked. Smart people in a hurry are doing it with Project Management JumpStart.

Kim Heldman has thoroughly demystified the proven principles of project management, casting them in language that anyone can understand, and use. She uses industry-standard terminology -- defining it simply, with loads of real-life analogies and examples.

You￯﾿ﾽll start by understanding what a project is, what its life cycle looks like, and what processes must be followed in order to run a project well (from goal setting through completion, and beyond). She outlines the cross-disciplinary skills good project managers need, offering tips on developing them if you don￯﾿ﾽt have them (handle every piece of information once, leave yourself voicemail when you have an idea and no place to write it down).

Then, it￯﾿ﾽs on to the project processes, starting with ￯﾿ﾽinitiation.￯﾿ﾽ Heldman presents an intelligent approach for identifying and prioritizing new projects, including a simple overview of methods for calculating ROI. She explains how to document stakeholder roles and responsibilities; walks through creating a project charter; and covers the kickoff meeting. There￯﾿ﾽs practical help with defining goals and scope, agreeing on deliverables, discovering requirements and critical success factors, and recognizing assumptions and constraints.

You￯﾿ﾽll walk through defining tasks and activities associated with your product, creating work breakdown structures, setting milestones, sequencing tasks, and identifying dependencies that can bottleneck your project. There￯﾿ﾽs a full chapter on scheduling, another on budgeting, and another -- invaluable -- on assessing and planning for risks. Heldman shows how to do all this without going near Microsoft Project or any similar tool.

At some point, the plans are ready, and it￯﾿ﾽs time to execute. Heldman covers every facet of project execution, from assembling your team to negotiation and problem solving, reporting progress to identifying problems -- and fixing them before you get off track. Intelligent project managers recognize that projects change, and Heldman shows how to account for those changes, establishing procedures for incorporating them, assessing their impact on deliverables, staffing, budgets, and schedule. She wraps up with a full chapter on the end-of-project stuff folks often skip: ￯﾿ﾽpost mortems,￯﾿ﾽ archiving project information, and the always-popular ￯﾿ﾽCelebrating Your Success￯﾿ﾽ phase.

When you￯﾿ﾽre ready to learn even more about project management, you￯﾿ﾽll want to pursue PMP certification by the renowned Project Management Institute. Heldman largely utilizes PMI￯﾿ﾽs approach, so you￯﾿ﾽll be off to a great start. (To get the rest of the way, check out Sybex￯﾿ﾽs PMP: Project Management Professional Study). Bill Camarda

Bill Camarda is a consultant, writer, and web/multimedia content developer. His 15 books include Special Edition Using Word 2000 and Upgrading & Fixing Networks for Dummies, Second Edition.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Prepare for a Project Management Career￯﾿ﾽFast!

Project Management JumpStart gives you the solid grounding you need to approach a career in project management with confidence:
Understanding the skills of a successful project manager
Creating project schedules and budgets
Winning the support of department managers
Monitoring project progress and taking corrective action
Communicating and negotiating effectively
Motivating the people on whom the project depends
Documenting the project clearly and professionally

Author Bio: Kim Heldman, PMP, has over ten years of experience in project management. She is the Director of the Project Management Office for the Department of Revenue, State of Colorado, and the author of the best-selling PMP: Project Management Professional Study Guide, also from Sybex.

SYNOPSIS