Project Management Essentials, Fourth Edition: A Quick and Easy Guide to the Most Important Concepts and Best Practices for Managing Your Projects Right

by William P. Athayde, Ruth Elswick, Paul Lombard

If you’re new to project management or need to refresh your knowledge, Project Management Essentials, Fourth Edition is the quickest and easiest way to learn how to manage projects successfully. The concepts presented are not rocket science. They are all common sense. Yet they require knowledge and discipline – a framework to manage projects right and the will to adhere to it. If you consistently use the simple tools and templates provided you’ll succeed. It’s as simple as that. In this book you’ll Project Management Essentials is purposefully written in short, clear chapters to make project management more easily understood. The authors, all valued senior faculty of PM College, bring both their business experience and their academic background to make these chapters come alive.

This updated edition offers even more templates and content than the widely used earlier editions and complies with the latest project management standard, the PMBOK® Guide Sixth Edition.

240 pages, Paperback

Published December 4, 2018

About the author

William P. Athayde, J.D., PMP, is a Senior Instructor with PM College. His responsibilities include classroom training, course development, and consulting on training issues as well as project management. Mr. Athayde gained his project management experience working in oil spill and hazardous materials remediation, construction, and systems development and integration projects and as the program manager of a team composed of 120 representatives of fourteen federal agencies, six state governments, and industry.

Prior to joining PM College, Mr. Athayde served as President of EHS Associates, an environmental, health, and safety consulting firm providing services to companies such as Exxon Chemical Americas (and its successor, Exxon Mobil Chemicals). He also taught project management courses for various organizations, specializing in procurement management and risk management. Previously, he served as Technical Director and then Executive Vice President and CEO of Industrial Marine Service.

Mr. Athayde has authored various papers and spoken on disaster recovery planning and operations, project and program team dynamics, CAMEO® (Computer-Aided Management of Emergency Operations), and emergency response. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Government from the University of San Francisco and his Doctor of Jurisprudence from University of Houston Law Center. He also studied law at Universidad Catolica Santa Maria (Arequipa, Peru). He is a member of the State Bar of Texas.

Reviews

[Paula · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought this book was ok. There wasn't anything really insightful in it that I hadn't read already. Seems like once you've read one Project Management book, you've read them all! I was going to make this a private note to myself, however, there are character limitations so I am posting it publicly. When I make book notes for myself - usually for books where I find a lot of useful information - I usually list out the chapters as well. This book didn't have enough information to write up a book note so I want to summarize what areas were discussed. Here are the headers for Chapters 1-11:
1. Selecting the Right Projects
2. Initiating the Project. One section is on identifying stakeholders and references the Influence/Impact Matrix, which I've seen in other PM books.
3. Planning to Succeed
4. Project cost and Budget
5. Scheduling the Project
6. The People Side of Project Management
7. Managing Project Risk
8. Executing the Project
9. Monitoring and Controlling the Project
10. Closing the Project
11. Lessons Learned ... And Used.
This may have been useful to capture but they include questionnaires you can send out to colleagues on Project Lessons Learned or Team Questionnaire for Capturing Lessons Learned. Asks questions related to intergroup coordination, requirements definition, planning, general questions such as "Did the Project Management Methodology work? Which of our methods or processes worked particularly well?"

My only issue is that I'm currently working on a project and they do ask stuff about lessons learned. I think this is somewhat useful but knowledge is useless unless it is made actionable and I noticed when looking at historical questionnaires on the project, that some of the lessons learned weren't actually applied. So like what's the point of learning if it's not actually changing how people behave and do things?

[Suzanne Christensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good over view of project management. I gave this to my college son and he has recommended it to his friends.

[Rachel Forster · Rating 4 out of 5]

With no previous project management experience I found this book informative and helpful. I appreciate the simple examples and mild humor provided throughout the book.