1st Edition

Gower Handbook of People in Project Management

By Lindsay Scott, Dennis Lock Copyright 2013

    Modern projects are all about one group of people delivering benefits to others, so it's no surprise that the human element is fundamental to project management. The Gower Handbook of People in Project Management is a complete guide to the human dimensions involved in projects. The book is a unique and rich compilation of over 60 chapters about project management roles and the people who sponsor, manage, deliver, work in or are otherwise important to project success. It looks at the people-issues that are specific to different sectors of organization (public, private and third sector); the organization of people in projects, both real and virtual; the relationship between people, their roles and the project environment; and the human behaviours and skills associated with working collaboratively. Thus this comprehensive and innovative handbook discusses all the important topics associated with employing, developing and managing people for successful projects. The contributors have been drawn from around the world and include experts ranging from practising managers to academics and advanced researchers. The Handbook is divided into six parts, which begin with management and project organization and progress through to more advanced and emerging practices. It benefits hugely from Lindsay Scott’s expert knowledge and experience in this field and from Dennis Lock’s contributions and meticulous editing to ensure that the text and illustrations are always lucid and informative.

    1: Management and Organisation; 1: People and Project Management; 2: Successes and Failures of People in Projects; 3: Project Life Cycles; 4: Project Sponsors; 5: Corporate Managers' Support for the Project Manager; 6: Project Management in the Private Sector; 7: People in Public Sector Projects; 8: Project Management in the Third Sector; 9: Introduction to Project Organisation Structures; 10: Managing in Matrix and More Complex Organisations; 11: International Projects; 12: Managing People in Virtual Project Organisations; 13: The Creative Organisation; 2: People in and Around the Project Environment; 14: Project Stakeholders; 15: People in Senior Project Roles; 16: People in Supporting Roles; 17: The Project Office Environment; 18: The Construction Working Environment; 19: The Workplace of the Future; 3: Improving Project Teams and Their People; 20: Identifying and Building Key Relationships; 21: Creating and Changing a Project Team; 22: Building Relationships through Influencing; 23: Managing Conflict in Projects; 24: Cross-cultural Relationships; 25: Project Communications; 26: Behavioural Traits; 27: Ethics in Project Management; 28: Leadership; 29: Conducting One's Self in Project Management; 30: Managing Daily Routines: A Day in the Life of a Project Manager; 31: Management Theorists of the Twentieth Century; 32: Team Development; 33: Motivating People in Projects; 34: Conduct of Meetings; 4: Developing the Individual; 35: Learning and Training: Part 1; 36: Learning and Training: Part 2; 37: Self-development; 38: Developing Competency; 39: Developing Project Management Capability; 40: Coaching and Mentoring; 5: Project Staffing and HRM Issues; 41: Scheduling People for a Single Project; 42: Resource Planning for People in a Projects Company; 43: Recruitment; 44: Legal Issues; 45: Pay and Rewards for Project Management Work; 46: Performance Appraisals; 47: Employment Termination: Letting People Go; 48: Advice for Project Managers on the Employment of Supplementary (Temporary) Workers; 6: More Specialised Topics; 49: Managing the People Side of Change; 50: Neuro Linguistic Programming; 51: Positive Psychology; 52: Industrial Psychology; 53: Emotional Intelligence in Project Management; 54: Managing Social Communications; 55: Empathy in Project Management; 56: Creativity; 57: The Hero Project Managers; 58: Human Traits and Behaviours in Project Management; 59: Career Paths in Project Management; 60: Project Management Certification: Taking Charge Locally; 61: Stress and Project Management: Maintaining High Performance; 62: Teams and Spirituality in Project Management 1; 63: Education and Qualifications in Project Management

    Biography

    After working for a UK division of Hewlett-Packard, Lindsay Scott established PM recruitment specialists Arras People in 2002. She is a careers column expert for PMI, contributes regularly to journals and broadsheets and is a frequent speaker. She is top project management social influencer in the social media and is a keen promoter of project and programme management offices. She markets the APM’s PMO specific interest group. Dennis Lock is a prolific and successful management writer whose career has included management positions in defence, heavy engineering and mining. He has also conducted consultancy assignments in the UK and overseas. More recently Dennis was an external lecturer in project management for the masters degree programmes of two English universities.

    ’This book has 63 chapters that average at about 13 pages per chapter. Each chapter has an introduction, some discussion and a conclusion, and is written by a current practitioner. I think that rather than being read from cover to cover, this book should be treated more like an encyclopedia - it could be the first place you would go to in order to research a topic, to be followed up in more detail if need be. In this application, the book does a good job across a wide range of subjects... it should be borne in mind that for this price you are getting at least 3 times the content of a more standard-sized book. This would be a good book to have on the shelves of a university, an organisational PMO, or a PM practitioner looking to develop their knowledge of the people aspects of PM.’ Brilliant Baselines ’A search on Amazon of the term project management turns up nearly 10,000 hits. However, adding the term people reduces that figure to just 1,300. Gower’s Handbook of People in Project Management goes some way to redress this imbalance by presenting a compilation of 60 pieces by more than 50 authors on the issue. The short chapters provide more than enough information to allow the main ideas to be picked up and put into practice ... The editors have selected a wide group of contributors and successfully merged their work into an easily read, comprehensive piece of work.’ Professional Manager ’...a phenomenal volume that covers off every facet of project management that you could ever imagine.’ The Papercut Project Manager