Project Management for Non-Project Managers

by Jack Ferraro

Overview

This practical guide reveals the project management methodology and processes that will give you the advantage to ensure your projects’ success--and advance organizational goals.

As a seasoned project management consultant and instructor for the American Management Association, author Jack Ferraro has gained years of experience bridging the gap between project managers and functional managers to help countless teams improve their performance. In this book, he demystifies the jargon and processes of project management, encouraging functional managers to jump into the PM arena and arming them with step-by-step guidelines for mastering the most critical PM skills.

In Project Management for Non-Project Managers, you will discover:

• business analysis techniques,
• work breakdown structures,
• program sequencing techniques,
• and risk management methods. 

Great managers are experts at getting bottom-line results, but often do not understand their role in the success or failure of their organization's projects. As projects become more strategic and collaborative, managers with even basic project-management knowledge are most capable of keeping projects business-focused.

By switching gears from passive bystander to active owner of project strategies, you’ll keep your team’s projects on track and, as a result, increase their business value.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814417379
Publisher:	HarperCollins Christian Publishing
Publication date:	08/22/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	257
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

JACK FERRARO, PMP, is president of MyProjectAdvisor(R), a company that provides project management consulting, coaching, and training. He has 22 years of experience working with project teams and managing complex projects.

Read an Excerpt

Introduction

The most common vehicle for implementing change within an organization is the project, or a combination of projects known as a program. Projects are becoming more strategic in nature and scope a and an increasing number of traditional white-collar workers are involved with projects in some fashion. These projects often require unprecedented collaboration within an organization’s lines of business a and across the business enterprise. This dynamic is creating a need for functional managers to work in collaboration, communicate effectively, and appreciate the best practice methods of project teams.

Project executives, sponsors, middle managers, and functional managers are expected to be involved in an organization’s projects—

over and above their duties of managing budgets, operations, and personnel. Functional managers’ job responsibilities, if not formally written, often implicitly include the implementation of positive change, delivered through projects. However, little attention is focused on the importance of functional managers’ understanding of how projects should work. Despite this, functional managers are the bridge to successful organizational change.

Unfortunately, project managers and their teams have embraced their own project management idiom. They communicate successfully among themselves using their own dialect and project management jargon. These project teams are often trained in organizational project management methodology and industry standards (e.g., they have read A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge a the PMBOK Guide), and their jargon can isolate a functional manager from his or her project team. This can lead to a lack of understanding of fundamental project processes on the part of functional manager and can result in poor communication, unhealthy conflict a project rework, schedule delays, cost overruns, and lost business opportunities.

While project management has grown rapidly as a career and core competency, with organizations embracing industry certifications such as the Project Management Professional (PMP), project management methodology and processes have done little to improve the working relationships between project teams (providers) and business units (customers).

As a seasoned project management consultant and instructor for

American Management Association, I have worked with countless functional managers attending project management classes, looking for a way to demystify project management so that they can improve the way that projects are performed in their organizations. These functional managers tell stories of being thrust into project teams and even project leadership positions with no training. Although they express no desire to achieve a project management certification, they recognize the importance of consistently delivering business value through the projects they work on. What they are missing is basic project management knowledge; they need core skills explained and taught with a commonsense approach to managing business change.

This book provides a practical guide for functional managers to learn what project managers and teams are doing—or should be doing—and to acquire the four critical project management skills to be an active, value-adding participant to the project organization:

1. Articulating the real customer need and business case for the project.

2. Staying focused on project deliverables.

3. Understanding key project dependencies.

4. Being proactive about project risk.

This book will motivate readers to take ownership of their project role and engage productively with project managers and teams to increase the business value being created from the project. Furthermore a it will enable functional managers to unveil the ‘‘what’’

and ‘‘why’’ of project management methodologies, processes, and deliverables and become active participants in increasing the value of these components, while eliminating the unnecessary project work that often slows them down.

The first four chapters discuss why you as a functional manager must take a more aggressive role in managing your projects. Drawing on my years of experience, I describe the value you need to bring to the project and why you are often the only one who can bring this value.

In the remaining chapters, I explore the core project management skills (listed above) that functional managers must use to succeed when they find themselves in strategic organization change projects. Each skill is taught by walking through a typical organizational project involving business process change, technology, and impacts to business partners and customers. At the end of each chapter, a use my own experience and case studies to reinforce the concepts.

My hope is that this book will help you to be much more project savvy, to embrace your role in your project organization, to partner closely with project teams, and, ultimately, to be a spearhead of change in your organization.

Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

PART ONE:

The Critical Role of the Functional Manager in Project

Success

Chapter 1 What the Functional Manager Should Know

About the Project Organization

Who Is the Functional Manager?

The Challenge of Integrating the Project Team into the Organization

The Functional Manager’s Role in Creating an Integrated Project

Organization

The Three Types of Organizational Structure

The Functional Manager’s Impact on Project Success or Failure

Chapter 2 The Importance of Project Planning

Creating Foresight

Why Do You Need a Plan?

What Is a Good Plan?

Basic Steps to Planning Projects

Summary of Project Planning

Project Plans and Vendors

Project Planning Tools: What They Do and What They Don’t Do

Challenges to Getting a Good Plan

Multi-Project Systems

Chapter 3 Understanding the Business Side of the Project

The Connection Between Business Knowledge and Requirements

Writing Good Requirements

Scope Creep

Stabilizing Requirements Through the Business Process

Chapter 4 The Ideal Functional Manager in the Project

Organization

‘‘Get It’’ . . . or Risk Getting Moved Out

PART TWO:

Four Critical Project Management Skills for Functional

Managers

Chapter 5 The Project Management Mystique Unveiled

A Shared Language

Project Management Demystified

Demystifying Methodologies

Chapter 6 Articulating the Real Customer Need and Business

Case for the Project

Producing a Mission Statement That Conveys Urgency and Vision

Creating a Meaningful Current and Future State Comparison

Base Your Requirements on the Business Process

Prepare a Realistic Business Cas

Chapter 7 Staying Focused on Project Deliverables

The Deliverable Structure: A Portrait of the Work

Creating Deliverable Structures

Case Study

Chapter 8 Understanding Key Project Dependencies

Telling Your Story of the Work

Case Study

Chapter 9 Being Proactive About Project Risk

Basics of Risk

Pushing the Risk Discussion

Case Study

Chapter 10 The Power of the Principles

Index

Editorial Reviews

Great title for every manager who is discouraged by the complex terminology and processes of the project management area. Jack Ferraro closes the gap between the two.” —Time Camp

“...great resource for accidental project managers; this book talks about the critical project management skills even as it lists out step-by-step guidelines for project management process.” —Nut Cache

“If you’re not a formal project manager but are looking for a text that distills the most important management lessons from the practice, this is the book for you.” —Capterra

“... this book is a must-read if you’re in the process of becoming a new project owner.” —GetApp

From the Publisher