Intro -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Introduction -- About This Book -- Foolish Assumptions -- Icons Used in This Book -- Beyond the Book -- Where to Go from Here -- Part 1 Getting Started with Project Management -- Chapter 1 Project Management: The Key to Achieving Results -- Determining What Makes a Project a Project -- Understanding the three main components that define a project -- Recognizing the diversity of projects -- Describing the four phases of a project life cycle -- Adopting a Principled Approach to Project Management -- Starting with stewardship and leadership -- Continuing with team and stakeholders -- Delivering value and quality -- Handling complexity, opportunities, and threats -- Exhibiting adaptability and resilience -- Thinking holistically and enabling change -- What Happened to Process Groups and Knowledge Areas? -- Do You Have What It Takes to Be an Effective Project Manager? -- Questions -- Answer key -- Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 7 -- Chapter 2 I'm a Project Manager! Now What? -- Knowing the Project Manager's Role -- Looking at the project manager's tasks -- Staving off excuses for not following a structured project management approach -- Avoiding shortcuts -- Staying aware of other potential challenges -- Aligning with the Four Values that Comprise the Code of Ethics -- The price of greatness is responsibility -- R-e-s-p-e-c-t, find out what it means to your project -- Maintaining fairness -- Honesty is the best policy -- Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 7 -- Chapter 3 Beginning the Journey: The Genesis of a Project -- Gathering Ideas for Projects -- Looking at information sources for potential projects -- Proposing a project in a business case -- Developing the Project Charter -- Performing a cost-benefit analysis -- Conducting a feasibility study.

Generating documents during the development of the project charter -- Deciding Which Projects to Move to the Second Phase of Their Life Cycle -- Tailoring Your Delivery Approach -- For the organization -- For the project -- Identifying the Models, Methods, and Artifacts to Use -- Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 7 -- Chapter 4 Knowing Your Project's Stakeholders: Involving the Right People -- Understanding Your Project's Stakeholders -- Developing a Stakeholder Register -- Starting your stakeholder register -- Using specific categories -- Considering stakeholders that are often overlooked -- Examining the beginning of a sample stakeholder register -- Ensuring your stakeholder register is complete and up-to-date -- Using a stakeholder register template -- Determining Whether Stakeholders Are Drivers, Supporters, or Observers -- Deciding when to involve your stakeholders -- Drivers -- Supporters -- Observers -- Using different methods to involve your stakeholders -- Making the most of your stakeholders' involvement -- Displaying Your Stakeholder Register -- Confirming Your Stakeholders' Authority -- Assessing Your Stakeholders' Power and Interest -- Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 7 -- Chapter 5 Clarifying What You're Trying to Accomplish And Why -- Defining Your Project with a Scope Statement -- Looking at the Big Picture: Explaining the Need for Your Project -- Figuring out why you're doing the project -- Identifying the initiator -- Determining who is contributing funds to support the project -- Recognizing other people who may benefit from your project -- Distinguishing the project champion -- Considering people who'll implement the results of your project -- Determining your project drivers' real expectations and needs -- Confirming that your project can address people's needs.

Uncovering other activities that relate to your project -- Emphasizing your project's importance to your organization -- Being exhaustive in your search for information -- Drawing the line: Where your project starts and stops -- Stating your project's objectives -- Making your objectives clear and specific -- Probing for all types of objectives -- Anticipating resistance to clearly defined objectives -- Marking Boundaries: Project Constraints -- Working within limitations -- Understanding the types of limitations -- Looking for project limitations -- Addressing limitations in your scope statement -- Dealing with needs -- Facing the Unknowns When Planning: Documenting Your Assumptions -- Presenting Your Scope Statement in a Clear and Concise Document -- Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 7 -- Chapter 6 Developing Your Game Plan: Getting from Here to There -- Divide and Conquer: Breaking Your Project into Manageable Chunks -- Thinking in detail -- Identifying necessary project work with a work breakdown structure -- Asking four key questions -- Making assumptions to clarify planned work -- Focusing on results when naming deliverables -- Using action verbs to title activities -- Developing a WBS for large and small projects -- Understanding a project's deliverables-activities hierarchy -- Dealing with special situations -- Representing conditionally repeating work -- Handling work with no obvious break points -- Planning a long-term project -- Issuing a contract for services you will receive -- Creating and Displaying Your Work Breakdown Structure -- Considering different schemes to create your WBS hierarchy -- Using one of two approaches to develop your WBS -- The top-down approach -- The brainstorming approach -- Categorizing your project's work -- Labeling your WBS entries -- Displaying your WBS in different formats.

The organization-chart format -- The indented-outline format -- The bubble-chart format -- Improving the quality of your WBS -- Using templates -- Drawing on previous experience -- Improving your WBS templates -- Identifying Risks While Detailing Your Work -- Documenting What You Need to Know about Your Planned Project Work -- Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 7 -- Part 2 Planning Time: Determining When and How Much -- Chapter 7 You Want This Project Done When? -- Picture This: Illustrating a Work Plan with a Network Diagram -- Defining a network diagram's elements -- Milestone -- Activity -- Duration -- Drawing a network diagram -- Analyzing a Network Diagram -- Reading a network diagram -- Interpreting a network diagram -- The importance of the critical path -- The forward pass: Determining critical paths, noncritical paths, and earliest start and finish dates -- The backward pass: Calculating the latest start and finish dates and slack times -- Working with Your Project's Network Diagram -- Determining precedence -- Looking at factors that affect predecessors -- Choosing immediate predecessors -- Using a network diagram to analyze a simple example -- Deciding on the activities -- Setting the order of the activities -- Creating the network diagram -- Developing Your Project's Schedule -- Taking the first steps -- Avoiding the pitfall of backing in to your schedule -- Meeting an established time constraint -- Applying different strategies to arrive at your picnic in less time -- Performing activities at the same time -- Estimating Activity Duration -- Determining the underlying factors -- Considering resource characteristics -- Improving activity duration estimates -- Displaying Your Project's Schedule -- Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 7 -- Chapter 8 Establishing Whom You Need, How Much of Their Time, and When.

Getting the Information You Need to Match People to Tasks -- Deciding what skills and knowledge team members must have -- Representing team members' skills, knowledge, and interests in a skills matrix -- Estimating Needed Commitment -- Using a human resources matrix -- Identifying needed personnel in a human resources matrix -- Estimating required work effort -- Factoring productivity, efficiency, and availability into work-effort estimates -- Reflecting efficiency when you use historical data -- Accounting for efficiency in personal work-effort estimates -- Ensuring Your Project Team Members Can Meet Their Resource Commitments -- Planning your initial allocations -- Resolving potential resource overloads -- Coordinating assignments across multiple projects -- Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 7 -- Chapter 9 Planning for Other Resources and Developing the Budget -- Determining Non-Personnel Resource Needs -- Making Sense of the Dollars: Project Costs and Budgets -- Looking at different types of project costs -- Recognizing the three stages of a project budget -- Refining your budget as your project progresses -- Determining project costs for a detailed budget estimate -- The bottom-up approach -- The top-down approach -- Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 7 -- Chapter 10 Venturing into the Unknown: Dealing with Risk -- Defining Risk and Risk Management -- Focusing on Risk Factors and Risks -- Recognizing risk factors -- Identifying risks -- Assessing Risks: Probability and Consequences -- Gauging the likelihood of a risk -- Relying on objective info -- Counting on personal opinions -- Estimating the extent of the consequences -- Getting Everything under Control: Managing Risk -- Choosing the risks you want to manage -- Developing a risk management strategy -- Communicating about risks -- Preparing a Risk Management Plan.

Relating This Chapter to the PMP Exam and PMBOK 7.