Most of the project management books I have read are basically textbooks. They are dry to begin with and don't focus on the practical advice that most people need to run their projects. My book does not assume you are a project manager building a nuclear reactor or sending a man to the moon. This book will focus instead on the millions of people who manage normal, medium to large projects on an ongoing basis. I think that this type of format will allow the readers to relate better to what they are reading, since it brings into play a project scenario and a practical project management lesson to learn. The reader will also recognize recurring characters that appear in multiple stories and will start to develop some empathy and interest for their struggle.
1. Foreword
2. Project management fundamentals. This will be the "textbook part".
The book will describe the fundamentals of
project management based on the TenStep Project Management Process. (www.TenStep.com). I will follow the
same "Ten Step" format in the book, but I will include only the fundamentals and highlights from each section.
3. Lessons from the real world. This is the meat of the book. There will be fifty stories, each with a valuable project management lesson. There will be three to six lessons on all of the major project management competencies, including defining a project, building a workplan, managing the workplan, and managing scope, issues, communication, risk, documents, quality and metrics. Each story will include character development, a project scenario, a problem showcased and then the lesson to apply to this situation. The stories will take place in chronological order over a one-year timeframe. Each story averages four pages. (200 pages)
4. Summary for the year
5. Glossary of terms
6. Index
