Project Management Leadership: Building Creative Teams, 2nd Edition

Authors’ Notes

Rory Burke

Project Management Leadership focuses on key project management leadership principles and theories, and explains how they are used in the project environment. This book has been updated to enable the project management leader to lead the project team, and the project participants to achieve the project objectives, as outlined in the project charter and business case.

Project success is usually expressed as having completed the project deliverables on time, within budget and to the required quality, but, from a leadership perspective, project success might be expressed as having motivated and inspired the project team members into giving their best performance toward completing the project objectives. It is, therefore, essential that project managers understand the features and characteristics of project leadership techniques so that they can manage the process effectively.

There have been two major changes to the project environment in recent years, which have motivated significant changes in the project manager’s leadership style, namely: the introduction of project teams working within a matrix-type project organization structure; and a general increase in the workforce’s level of education, ability and expectations.

These organizational changes mean that project managers might not have full line authority over the resources they need to carry out the ...