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Incredibly Easy Project Management: A Mildly Heretical Perspective

by Norman Willoughby

218 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #00-0046; ISBN 1-55212-382-0; US$19.95, C$34.95, EUR19.95, £13.95

A management manual with particular emphasis on the control of projects across all sectors of government, civil society and industry. It covers the gamut through planning, organization, responsibility, communication, contracts and monitoring.

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about the book      about the author      sample chapter      catalogue info

About the Book This book is a management manual with particular emphasis on the control of projects across all sectors of government, civil society and industry. It covers the gamut through planning, organization, responsibility, communication, contracts and montoring. Review of Incredibly Easy Project Management An enjoyable read and one that will provide a good insight and introduction to Project Management; a book which will be of value to Students and professionals involved in the area of Project Management that may need a refresher. Journal of the Association of Building Engineers (ABE) (United Kingdom, November 2000)

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About the Author

Despair of management practices, especially poor communication, through fifty-odd years of bottom-to-top experience led Norman Willoughby to begin a monograph on communication through charts and diagrams. This quickly outgrew its theme and became Incredibly Easy Project Management. Nothing has happened to shake his belief that management is not all that difficult if we pay attention to a few, seemingly simplistic, fundamentals.

Norman has practised exclusively as a project manager and project management consultant for the past thirty years. Before that, starting as an apprentice civil engineer, then surveying in Canada and Venezuela, he worked in positions of increasing responsibility in design and construction including as managing director of a construction company in Jamaica and president and general manager of a project management consultancy in Ottawa.

As a project manager, he has directed a diverse range of projects for the Government: shipping Canadian cattle to Nicaragua; a farm-worker housing program in Costa Rica; a railway rehabilitation program in Tanzania; management monitoring of an educational project in Fiji; for private enterprise: a proposal for a seaquarium in Panama; as Contracts Manager on a design/build fifty-six million dollar Transport Canada Training Institute; a tourist development in the Republic of Honduras where he, his wife, their ocelot and house-cat were lucky to survive Hurricane Fifi ....... unfortunately, the project drowned! He has also advised property developers in Portugal and construction companies in various countries.

Amongst many tasks as a consultant sponsored by the Canadian International Development Agency, he developed aid-agency management structures, institutional evaluations, conducted a seminar in project management for the Palestine Health Authority and contributed to a strategic development plan.

Norman now practises as a management consultant in Victoria.

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Sample chapter

Reiteration in this book of "whoever controls the money, controls the project" may appear unnecessarily heavy-handed but it merits constant repetition. Keep it always in mind but especially during planning. It may be too late to make changes after the plan of operation (POP) has been approved. Although POPs by their nature may be modified, casually-entrenched authority is incredibly difficult to revoke--it will be strenuously resisted by those who have acquired it. If authority over disbursement is inadvertently or by undue influence put in the wrong hands, wresting it from their grasp will be infinitely more difficult than making sure it was in the right hands in the first place

Too often, these things are not noticed during the planning of a complex project. An unintentional qualification to a relationship slips in and has a contractual, legal or control significance during implementation that was neitther intended nor anticipated. Check every relationship against this significant criterion: "Who controls the money?"

For instance, a contract that is nominally under the control of the project manager but for which payments are indicated as being approved by another is effectively under the control of the other. Of course, this may be a perfectly proper activity and authority but make sure that is what you intend...After all, we are all on the same side and there is no reason to assume that approval will be withheld. However, that is not the salient point. Keep as much as possible of the control where it belongs--in the hands of the project manager. But don't get carried away by the exuberance of power; it is still the "client" who must be served and the client who foots the bill or represents those that foot the bill. If you are in government, remember well that the ultimate "client" is the taxpayer.

Money control = project control

The organigram (organization chart) should show the lines of control of the project. If the lines do not clearly indicate the flow of control parallelling the flow of money, then either there is an error in the organigram or in the planning concept. Preparing the organigram in the first stages of planning (and modifying it as you proceed) will enable you to perceive any anomalies that could prejudice the smooth running of the project.

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Catalogue Information

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