Project Management Of Multiple Projects And Contracts
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International Journal of Project Management 20 (2002) 179±182
www.elsevier.com/locate/ijproman
Book reviews
Project Management of Multiple Projects and Contracts Edited by J. Loftus, Thomas Telford, 1999, £35.00 ISBN: 0-7277-2710-9, 194 p. This book deals with the management challenges faced by a company or organisation which needs to carry out a range of projects to support and maintain its ongoing business or operation. This book therefore only covers a very speci®c subset of the area that might be ¯agged under the title `Project management of multiple projects and contracts'. The book can be recommended to people in the manufacturing sector who are new to project management. However, they may ®nd it dicult to persist with the reading. The text largely consists of facts, opinions and recommendations which does not leave much room for the reader to engage with the text. Another group of readers might be those charged with setting up project control and management systems. The facts, opinions, recommendations, and sample documentation provide useful reminders and checklists, both explicitly and implicitly. Before making further overall comments I will now turn to the book, its eight chapters, in more detail: Chapter One sets up the framework within which the book is written, i.e. that of a manufacturer managing an ongoing capital budget to support an ongoing process or business. This chapter describes the function of the department charged with managing the ongoing capital budget. It provides a useful description of an actual department charged with this responsibility. Chapter Two describes the process of gaining approval for capital expenditure. It presents a sequence for obtaining approval for capital expenditure and contains useful examples of documentation and indirectly provides a check list. The title of Chapter Three, `Commercial management', led me to expect a discussion on markets, sales, likely revenues etc. but instead found that `commercial management' is seen essentially as entering into the contract. I therefore take it that this term has varying meanings from place to place. The chapter brie¯y discusses, among other things, accounting, risk, economic conditions, administrative requirements, sub-contracting, and procurement strategy. Again, a useful checklist is both explicitly and implicitly present in the chapter. 0263-7863/01/$20.00 # 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S0263-7863(00)00047-8
Chapter Four covers the whole range from the capital expenditure management to the cost control of a single project. It does so in broad overview which is useful in thinking about allocating responsibility for budget management. Chapter Five is a description of what would be commonly understood as good project management practice when running a single project from design to takeover, with due emphasis on passing the project on to the operators of the ®nal project. The last part of the chapter places emphasis on time management. Again, examples of documentation are provided. Chapter Six is a brief chapter which deals with the accounting treatment of `cost of work done' in the client's book keeping. Chapter Seven solidly discusses the issue of how an organisation sets itself up to carry out a number of projects at the same time. It deals with the common responses to this problem and interestingly presents two case studies on how two organisations have attempted to deal with the issues involved. This chapter is quite dierent in tone from the rest of the book; here one is invited into a discussion which is a more engaging experience for the reader. Chapter Eight makes a range of points about a number of issues, e.g. safety, quality, planning, o-site and on-site work, project culture, services, contracting strategy, etc. The point about providing adequate sta for the management of interfaces is well made. My further general comments are: This is a short book covering a wide range and therefore has the obvious problem of lack of depth on any one point. However it does cover much of the territory and is therefore useful. Parts of the text clearly deal with issues associated with multiple projects, e.g. the chapter on capital expenditure proposals and the chapter on department organisation, but parts of the text fall back on the detailing of how to manage a single project, e.g. the chapter on project management. This vacillation between dealing with multiple projects and dealing with the management of individual projects weakens the book. It ends up being neither properly one nor the other; the issue of the management of multiple projects itself deserves its own book. Constraining and disciplining things so that `proper' and `authoritative' control is maintained seems to be the
180
Book reviews / International Journal of Project Management 20 (2002) 179±182
objective. Doing the job as advocated by this text relies on somebody having sucient power to impose the methods and proper procedures. The text does not discuss this issue. What the book is doing is describing a way of doing things without discussing whether or not the methods should be applied and without a discussion on how one gets sucient support to implement the methods. The text is well presented, well laid out with good diagrams. It lacks an index and contains very few refer-
ences, which is a pity. I am pleased to have read the book and would recommend it to the two targets groups I have mentioned. Patrick Healy University of Technology, Sydney PO Box 123 Broadway NSW 2007 Australia
PII: S0263-7863(00)00047-8
Managing Unique Assignments Gert Wijnen and Rudy Kur, Gower Publishing, 2000, ISBN 0-566-08279-9. This is a wide ranging book where Wijnen and Kur have distilled their many years of consulting experience in project and programme management. It is written mainly for experienced project managers and for upper managers who must construct and direct organisational processes. The authors state that ``Managing Unique Assignments is primarily intended for everyone who has to deal with unique assignments on a regular basis because of his position as ±potential± manager, leader or supervisor. . .'' Since the book is a result of project experience in organisations it contains many andicdotes regarding typical organizational perversities that surround resource allocation. The experienced manager will ®nd the descriptions to be accurate re¯ections of their reality. The student will feel much of it to be improbable ®ction. In the ®rst three chapters the authors expand beyond typical project management to programme approach and programme management. Chapter one gives the basics of their project-based working approach, consisting of phasing, managing and decision making, as well as their programme approach of programming, managing, and decision making. The details of these approaches are given in chapters two and three. Chapter's four focuses on the interaction among the ``leading players'' of the principle, the project manager and the
project team. Chapter ®ve concentrates on environmental factors for success while chapter six reviews fundamentals of team development, con¯ict management and roles and responsibilities. The ®nal chapter covers methods to develop sta competencies to enable the sta to better handle unique assignments. Taken as a whole the chapter oer a total system that could help to improve project management in any organisation. It is clear that the authors are quite knowledgeable as they share a wealth of experience. It also seems that this book was not rushed to publication as it is well structured with cogent arguments. The charts and illustrations are excellent and the appendix is full of checklists that can be used on the job. At times the authors do get a bit wordy as they describe their ideas with rather lengthy arguments. Reading the full text can become tedious at times. However, the authors seemed aware of that problem and oer a preÂcis in the margin of most pages as a solution. I found that reading the preÂcis and examining the illustrations allowed me to understand the essentials of the book in short order. I would recommend this book to any manager concerned with increasing project success throughout their organisation. Bob Graham RJ Graham and Associates PO Box 2537 Mendocino, CA 95460 USA
PII: S0263-7863(01)00026-6
Project Management Dennis Lock, Gower Publishing, Aldershot, UK and Vermont, USA 2000, £25.00, ISBN-0566 08225, 640 pp. The seventh edition of this book is a worthy successor to all the rest. Each in its turn has ®gured on my bookshelf. Never books to read from cover to cover, nevertheless
always a compendium of project management knowledge and necessary to my peace of mind as a practitioner! The seventh is larger, re-ordered and the number of topics has been extended to meet modern project management needs, and it covers much of the Association for Project Managements (APM) Body of Knowledge. It seems to be more generic, within the boundary of
www.elsevier.com/locate/ijproman
Book reviews
Project Management of Multiple Projects and Contracts Edited by J. Loftus, Thomas Telford, 1999, £35.00 ISBN: 0-7277-2710-9, 194 p. This book deals with the management challenges faced by a company or organisation which needs to carry out a range of projects to support and maintain its ongoing business or operation. This book therefore only covers a very speci®c subset of the area that might be ¯agged under the title `Project management of multiple projects and contracts'. The book can be recommended to people in the manufacturing sector who are new to project management. However, they may ®nd it dicult to persist with the reading. The text largely consists of facts, opinions and recommendations which does not leave much room for the reader to engage with the text. Another group of readers might be those charged with setting up project control and management systems. The facts, opinions, recommendations, and sample documentation provide useful reminders and checklists, both explicitly and implicitly. Before making further overall comments I will now turn to the book, its eight chapters, in more detail: Chapter One sets up the framework within which the book is written, i.e. that of a manufacturer managing an ongoing capital budget to support an ongoing process or business. This chapter describes the function of the department charged with managing the ongoing capital budget. It provides a useful description of an actual department charged with this responsibility. Chapter Two describes the process of gaining approval for capital expenditure. It presents a sequence for obtaining approval for capital expenditure and contains useful examples of documentation and indirectly provides a check list. The title of Chapter Three, `Commercial management', led me to expect a discussion on markets, sales, likely revenues etc. but instead found that `commercial management' is seen essentially as entering into the contract. I therefore take it that this term has varying meanings from place to place. The chapter brie¯y discusses, among other things, accounting, risk, economic conditions, administrative requirements, sub-contracting, and procurement strategy. Again, a useful checklist is both explicitly and implicitly present in the chapter. 0263-7863/01/$20.00 # 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S0263-7863(00)00047-8
Chapter Four covers the whole range from the capital expenditure management to the cost control of a single project. It does so in broad overview which is useful in thinking about allocating responsibility for budget management. Chapter Five is a description of what would be commonly understood as good project management practice when running a single project from design to takeover, with due emphasis on passing the project on to the operators of the ®nal project. The last part of the chapter places emphasis on time management. Again, examples of documentation are provided. Chapter Six is a brief chapter which deals with the accounting treatment of `cost of work done' in the client's book keeping. Chapter Seven solidly discusses the issue of how an organisation sets itself up to carry out a number of projects at the same time. It deals with the common responses to this problem and interestingly presents two case studies on how two organisations have attempted to deal with the issues involved. This chapter is quite dierent in tone from the rest of the book; here one is invited into a discussion which is a more engaging experience for the reader. Chapter Eight makes a range of points about a number of issues, e.g. safety, quality, planning, o-site and on-site work, project culture, services, contracting strategy, etc. The point about providing adequate sta for the management of interfaces is well made. My further general comments are: This is a short book covering a wide range and therefore has the obvious problem of lack of depth on any one point. However it does cover much of the territory and is therefore useful. Parts of the text clearly deal with issues associated with multiple projects, e.g. the chapter on capital expenditure proposals and the chapter on department organisation, but parts of the text fall back on the detailing of how to manage a single project, e.g. the chapter on project management. This vacillation between dealing with multiple projects and dealing with the management of individual projects weakens the book. It ends up being neither properly one nor the other; the issue of the management of multiple projects itself deserves its own book. Constraining and disciplining things so that `proper' and `authoritative' control is maintained seems to be the
180
Book reviews / International Journal of Project Management 20 (2002) 179±182
objective. Doing the job as advocated by this text relies on somebody having sucient power to impose the methods and proper procedures. The text does not discuss this issue. What the book is doing is describing a way of doing things without discussing whether or not the methods should be applied and without a discussion on how one gets sucient support to implement the methods. The text is well presented, well laid out with good diagrams. It lacks an index and contains very few refer-
ences, which is a pity. I am pleased to have read the book and would recommend it to the two targets groups I have mentioned. Patrick Healy University of Technology, Sydney PO Box 123 Broadway NSW 2007 Australia
PII: S0263-7863(00)00047-8
Managing Unique Assignments Gert Wijnen and Rudy Kur, Gower Publishing, 2000, ISBN 0-566-08279-9. This is a wide ranging book where Wijnen and Kur have distilled their many years of consulting experience in project and programme management. It is written mainly for experienced project managers and for upper managers who must construct and direct organisational processes. The authors state that ``Managing Unique Assignments is primarily intended for everyone who has to deal with unique assignments on a regular basis because of his position as ±potential± manager, leader or supervisor. . .'' Since the book is a result of project experience in organisations it contains many andicdotes regarding typical organizational perversities that surround resource allocation. The experienced manager will ®nd the descriptions to be accurate re¯ections of their reality. The student will feel much of it to be improbable ®ction. In the ®rst three chapters the authors expand beyond typical project management to programme approach and programme management. Chapter one gives the basics of their project-based working approach, consisting of phasing, managing and decision making, as well as their programme approach of programming, managing, and decision making. The details of these approaches are given in chapters two and three. Chapter's four focuses on the interaction among the ``leading players'' of the principle, the project manager and the
project team. Chapter ®ve concentrates on environmental factors for success while chapter six reviews fundamentals of team development, con¯ict management and roles and responsibilities. The ®nal chapter covers methods to develop sta competencies to enable the sta to better handle unique assignments. Taken as a whole the chapter oer a total system that could help to improve project management in any organisation. It is clear that the authors are quite knowledgeable as they share a wealth of experience. It also seems that this book was not rushed to publication as it is well structured with cogent arguments. The charts and illustrations are excellent and the appendix is full of checklists that can be used on the job. At times the authors do get a bit wordy as they describe their ideas with rather lengthy arguments. Reading the full text can become tedious at times. However, the authors seemed aware of that problem and oer a preÂcis in the margin of most pages as a solution. I found that reading the preÂcis and examining the illustrations allowed me to understand the essentials of the book in short order. I would recommend this book to any manager concerned with increasing project success throughout their organisation. Bob Graham RJ Graham and Associates PO Box 2537 Mendocino, CA 95460 USA
PII: S0263-7863(01)00026-6
Project Management Dennis Lock, Gower Publishing, Aldershot, UK and Vermont, USA 2000, £25.00, ISBN-0566 08225, 640 pp. The seventh edition of this book is a worthy successor to all the rest. Each in its turn has ®gured on my bookshelf. Never books to read from cover to cover, nevertheless
always a compendium of project management knowledge and necessary to my peace of mind as a practitioner! The seventh is larger, re-ordered and the number of topics has been extended to meet modern project management needs, and it covers much of the Association for Project Managements (APM) Body of Knowledge. It seems to be more generic, within the boundary of
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