Project Management ToolBox: Tools and Techniques for the Practicing Project Manager

Preface

Packing the Theory in the Project Management Toolbox

The power of project management (PM) is at its historic peak, primarily because it has become a business strategy of choice. The evidence is abundant. Large corporations, the locomotive of the American economy, have launched corporate-wide PM initiatives and centers of PM excellence, poised to create a successful environment for PM. To improve their competitiveness, Fortune 500 started a PM Benchmarking Forum, tasked to identify best PM practices. Small businesses are racing to follow suit. Most interestingly, this is an across-the-industry phenomenon. Joining traditional proponents of PM such as construction and aerospace are the powerhouses of new economy, high-technology, and telecommunications companies.

Riding on this wave of PM popularity, the Project Management Institute, the world's largest association of project managers, has been enjoying exponential growth in terms of both membership and certified Project Management Professionals. Management gurus have thrown their weight behind PM as well. Tom Peters calls project manager the job number one in the twenty-first century. Eliahy Goldratt, the pioneer of the theory of constraints, pictures PM as the next frontier of continuous business improvement. As they wish to give credence to the guru's assertions, companies have poured billions of dollars into PM training.

A central place in the PM rise belongs to project process management, an outgrowth of the total quality ...