Project Planning, Scheduling and Control: The Ultimate Hands-On Guide To Bringing Projects in On Time and On Budget, 6th Edition James P. Lewis

Project Planning, Scheduling and
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to Bringing Projects in On Time and On
Budget, 6th Edition James P. Lewis
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Praise for
PROJECT PLANNING,
SCHEDULING & CONTROL
Jim Lewis’s new book Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control is a

master class in project, program, and business management and lead-
ership! It captures the essence of how talented people, including all
the stakeholders, can work together to create and deliver a compelling
vision and value for the greater good. As we all know, this capabil-
ity, operational process, and these expected behaviors are needed more
than ever for the good of us all. Thank you, Jim!
—Alan Mulally
former CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes,
Boeing Information, Space and Defense Systems,
and the Ford Motor Company
Jim Lewis has written a detailed how-to book on managing projects—

and since all work is project work, it’s a crucial book for driving
performance, especially with remote teams. His methods have stood
the test of time, having been introduced in 1991, and I recommend
you keep his book as a reference at all times.
—Verne Harnish
Founder, Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO),
and author of Scaling Up (Rockefeller Habits 2.0)
Every project manager will find something of value in this book. It’s
a practical, readable, and unapologetic discussion of the systems and
tools of project management that really work.
—Dean R. Gehring
Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer,
Newmont Corporation
Using the art of storytelling, Dr. James Lewis explains the ingredients
for a successful project: determine a strategy, be flexible, identify and
manage risks, and plan for contingencies. His key ingredient is how
to work creatively with people. The book is a must-read for all project
managers who want to learn how to be effective project leaders.
—Marcus Udokang
Project Manager, Aivaz Consulting, Inc.
There are thousands of project management books out there, but if

you are looking for a book that teaches you how to successfully deliver
projects on time and on budget, and within the scope, this is the book.
The sixth edition contains the most recent advancements in the project
management world without losing the fundamentals that have made
this book a go-to to acquire project management knowledge. I highly
recommend this book. It is a must-have for all project management
professionals.
—Tony Prensa, PhD, PMP
President and CEO,
TP Global Business Consulting LLC
Good project management is difficult. Lewis fills in the practical gaps

where most project management texts fall short. This work empowers
the reader by making project management real, fun, and accessible.
If you are serious about project management, be prepared to dog-ear
more than half of this book.
—Chris Pappas
CEO, Forthea
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Copyright © 2023, 2011, 2006 by James P. Lewis. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lewis, James P., author.

Title: Project planning, scheduling, and control : the ultimate hands-on guide to bringing projects in on time and on budget /
James Lewis.
Other titles: Project planning, scheduling, & control
Description: Sixth Edition. | New York : McGraw Hill, [2023] | Revised edition of the author’s Project planning, scheduling &
control, c2011. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022028456 (print) | LCCN 2022028457 (ebook) | ISBN 9781264286270 (hardback) | ISBN 9781264286287
(ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Project management. | Scheduling.
Classification: LCC HD69.P75 L493 2023 (print) | LCC HD69.P75 (ebook) | DDC 658.4/04—dc23/eng/20220729
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022028456
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High Performance Project Management and Full-Spectrum Project Management are trademarks of The Lewis Institute, Inc. The
Lewis Method and Projects are People are registered trademarks of The Lewis Institute, Inc. PMI, PMBOK, and PMP are regis-
tered trademarks of the Project Management Institute. Microsoft Project, SharePoint, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Word are regis-
tered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Mind Map is a registered trademark of Tony Buzan. Whole Brain is a registered trade-
mark of Herrmann International. HBDI is a trademark of Herrmann International. The grid containing a thinking profile is also
copyright by Herrmann International, and all such figures in this book are used by permission. MindManager is a trademark of
MindJet. Kerzner Approach is a registered trademark of International Institute for Learning, Inc. Adobe PhotoShop is a registered
trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated. Expert Choice is a registered trademark of Decision Support Software, Inc. Post-it is
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TERMS OF USE
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Dedicated to the memory of my parents,
without whom I would never have become an engineer,
a PhD psychologist, and an author.
Hazel Inez McDaniel (1919–1999)

Moffett Palmer Lewis (1920–1998)
And with gratitude to Frances Ann Scherl

for marrying me in 2013 and bringing with her four daughters
and nine grandchildren, who are our future.
CONTENTS
Preface ..............................................................................................xi
SECTION ONE
INTRODUCTION TO
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
CHAPTER 1 An Introduction to Project Management .............................. 3
CHAPTER 2 The Project Management Institute and the

PMBOK ® GUIDE ...........................................................................55
CHAPTER 3 The Role of the Project Manager ...........................................63
CHAPTER 4 How to Achieve High-Performance

Project Management™ .................................................................81
CHAPTER 5 Whole-Brain® Project Management ......101 SECTION TWO
PROJECT DEFINITION
CHAPTER 6 Headless-Chicken Projects and
How to Prevent Them ..............................................................131
SECTION THREE
PROJECT PLANNING
CHAPTER 7 Developing Project Strategy .................................................177
CHAPTER 8 Implementation Planning ...................................................... 205
vii
CHAPTER 9 Project Scheduling .................................................................. 253
CHAPTER 10 Managing Project Communications ................................ 279
CHAPTER 11 Managing Risks ..................................... 293 SECTION FOUR
EXECUTION AND CONTROL

CHAPTER 12 Project Control ............................................................................311
CHAPTER 13 Conducting Project Reviews ................ 363 SECTION FIVE
OTHER ISSUES IN PROJECT

MANAGEMENT
CHAPTER 14 Managing the Enterprise Using Project
Management Methods .......................................................... 383
CHAPTER 15 The Leadership Imperative .................................................. 391
CHAPTER 16 The Digital Project Office ...................................................... 399
CHAPTER 17 Using Stagegate ® to Select, Evaluate,

and Control Projects .............................................................. 405
CHAPTER 18 Dealing with Stakeholders .......................................................411
CHAPTER 19 Applying Alan Mulally’s Principles

to Project Management ..........................................................417
CHAPTER 20 Complexities and Pitfalls in International Projects ... 427
CHAPTER 21 Remote Teams .......................................................................... 435
APPENDIX Schedule Computations ..........................................................441
Glossary ..................................................................................... 465

References and Reading List ..................................................471
Index ............................................................................................ 485
T his came to me fully written in a meditation a few years
ago. I present it as a message to all of you who think
you need to struggle to make a living in this world.
Think Again.
You Are Already There

We are now,
And always have been,
Perfect in our true spiritual being.
The struggle
To perfect this human sense of self
Simply obscures
The perfection of the “I”
That we already are.
There is no path,
No destination.
Open your eyes.
You are already there,
Where you imagine
You need to be.
ix
PREFACE
S ometime in 1991 a student in one of my project man-

agement seminars asked, “Have you ever thought about
writing a book on this topic?” I had, but since 1981 I had
been traveling around the world teaching the subject and related
topics such as leadership skills, and writing a book just hadn’t
been on my radar.
The idea did appeal to me, however, so I wrote short letters to
three publishers that I found in Writer’s Digest and waited. In less
than a week I received a call from Pamela van Geissen, who was
an acquisitions editor at Probus Publishing in Chicago. She was
interested in the book and wondered if I ever made it to Chicago.
If you believe in synchronicity—and perhaps if you don’t—
this will rock your boat. “I’ll be up there next week,” I said.
It was definitely a sign. I seldom worked in Chicago, but the
next week I was in Pamela’s office and within an hour had signed
an agreement to write the book. It was only about an inch thick
in the first edition, with a purple cover, which I told Pamela was
often the favorite color of mental patients, so I was uncertain
if that was a negative sign. As it turns out, it was anything but
negative.
The little purple book did remarkably well in the mar-
ket. Project management was just coming into its own, and for
a while it was recommended by PMI as a study guide for the
PMP® exam. Then Pamela asked if I could do some more books,
xi
and The Project Manager’s Desk Reference and Mastering Project
Management were to follow. I also proposed a book on project
teams, but Pamela felt that Probus may not be able to sell it, so
she referred me to an editor at AMACOM, who agreed to pub-
lish it—and Team-Based Project Management joined the lineup.
As is true of small companies, Probus caught the eye of
someone at Irwin Professional Publishing, and they bought the
company. I was now working with a much larger company, but
the ride didn’t slow down. Irwin was later bought by McGraw
Hill, and now I was with a behemoth of a company. They had
my second or third edition translated into Chinese, Portuguese,
Spanish, and Lithuanian. My book Project Leadership was also
translated into Russian. I’m not sure if Vladimir Putin read it,
and I hope not, as he didn’t learn much from me if he did.
So now I am getting ready to send the manuscript of the sixth
edition to my editor, Judith Newlin, at McGraw Hill. Thirty
years ago, I wouldn’t have dreamed the little purple book would
stand the test of time, surviving several recessions, a global pan-
demic, and an abundance of other books on project management.
I am grateful to all of my readers and students. I posted a
copy of the fifth edition cover on LinkedIn last year and had over
6,000 views of it—more than any other post I’ve made.
And I’m grateful to the folks at McGraw Hill for supporting
me all these years. I was in New York the day before 9/11 and
flew out making a big circle around the city. It was a beautiful
view of the city and the Twin Towers, and the next day my wife
called me at my office and told me to turn on the TV. I watched
in horror as the plane hit the second tower and immediately
thought of everyone I knew at McGraw Hill and some in the
Twin Towers as well. Sadly, I never learned the fate of those in
the World Trade Center, but happily the folks at MH were fine.
xiii
I’ve dedicated this edition to the memory of my parents.

My father had only an eighth-grade education and was ambi-
tious enough to climb out of the cotton mills and learn to drive
an 18-wheeler. My mom finished high school and worked as a
seamstress her entire adult life. I hardly ever saw her without a
crochet needle in one hand and a book in the other.
And since I’m on memory lane, I should mention that a fel-
low named Kenneth Suther, who had learned electronics in the
navy, gave me a start into ham radio, which led to the career in
electrical engineering. I will be forever grateful to him for the
encouragement he gave me. For 15 years I fulfilled a dream of
designing the equipment that I couldn’t afford to buy at age 16
when I became K4SAM.
All that childhood experience led to two careers—
engineering and teaching—and a life I never dreamed of. I have
taught in 30 countries, with more than 60,000 people attending
my classes. I got to circle the globe twice, visiting my exchange
student “daughters” and their families, and I have friends all over
the world. As they say, who knew?
Fairview, North Carolina (near Asheville)

March 22, 2022
James Palmer Lewis
Jim to my friends
SECTION ONE
INTRODUCTION
TO PROJECT
MANAGEMENT
CHAPTER 1
An Introduction to
Project Management
I became a project manager (PM) in 1966. I never chose to be

a PM, but later I learned it came with the job, even though
it was not contained in my job description. Today I would be
called an accidental project manager, but in 1966 I wasn’t even
recognized as a manager—just an engineer, and like a scientist
told me about 40 years later, “nobody told me when I was work-
ing on my doctorate that I was going to have to manage people. I
have no idea how to do that.”
He was right. Yet companies (meaning the people who com-
prise the company) do this again and again, assuming that if you
are any good at your work, you know how to be a manager. It’s
the greatest way to make an ass-out-of-u-and-me (assume) and
wreaks havoc with individuals, teams, and organizations. It lives
on, however, and perhaps it has lived for as long as organized
work has existed.
3
PROJECT MANAGEMENT:
THE BEGINNING
Projects have been going on for thousands of years of recorded

history and there is evidence that they were being conducted
many years before that. The building of the great pyramids, the
sites in India carved out of the rock, the Mayan, Incan, and
Aztec buildings, and the stone circles that exist throughout the
world are all examples of projects.
Did they have official managers? Surely someone had to con-
ceive them and someone had to lead them. Whether the conceiver
and the manager were the same individual is unknown. Further-
more, I once wrote an expert on Egypt at the British Museum and
asked if there was any evidence of plans on skins or papyrus, and
he said there were none that he knew of. Yet it is hard to imagine
the Great Pyramid of Giza being built without detailed plans—
and the current unofficial dating of that structure is 12,500 years
ago. And while Stonehenge is not nearly as complex as the pyra-
mids, it did require a lot of ingenuity to move the stones to the site,
align them with astronomical sources, raise them vertically, and
(in the case of lintels) place them on top of the vertical supports.
In thinking about this, I imagine Hrog chiseling away at a
big slab of stone that would soon become one of the lintels. The
clan chief sees him at work and observes that he is an impeccable
chiseler. “You’re really good at chiseling, Hrog,” he says. “I want
you to turn the chisel over to Arg and start supervising the work.
Make a plan so we can ensure that the circle is oriented accord-
ing to the Seer’s instructions.” (The Seer was the high priest, who
knew how to orient the circle to catch the rays of the sun exactly
right on the summer solstice.)
Hrog bit his lip. He could hardly tell the chief that he knew
less than nothing about planning, and even less about supervising
AN INTRODUCTION TO PROJECT MANAGEMENT 5
other workers. His dad had only taught him how to chisel, not
supervise other workers. They would likely feed him to the pack
of wild dogs that hungrily watched the camp hoping to find a
morsel of food—or better yet, a tasty supervisor who had been
stabbed in the back by the workers who were pissed at him for
thinking he knew more about building a Henge than they did.
“You have to wear a uniform too,” said the chief, “so the
workers can recognize you wherever you are on the site.”
Now Hrog groaned audibly. He was dead meat for sure.
“What’s that?” asked the chief.
“Just clearing my throat, sir,” Hrog replied.
Sure enough, they dressed Hrog in a fine leopard skin that
had been imported from far-away Ungafa (now called Africa)
and told everyone to do whatever he told them to do. Fortunately
for Hrog, the workers weren’t inclined to kill him, because none
of them wanted his job, so for a year, he prospered. And besides,
if they did what he told them, and it didn’t work out, it wouldn’t
be their fault. They could point at him and the chief would kick
his behind, not theirs.
As it turned out, the first phase of the Henge was completed
about two months before the next solstice and the sun shone
directly through the appointed opening and onto the target, and
Hrog was awarded the designation of project manager of the
year. Thus, Hrog may have been one of the first accidental project
managers. (The experts believe that Stonehenge was built in six
phases that spanned 1,500 years, so my imagination is just fantasy,
as no one knows how long any of the phases actually required.)
In fact, the chief told Hrog that a new association had been
formed on the mainland south of the island. It was called SOP-
CAM, for Society of Professional Chiselers and Managers, and
they were certifying individuals as PUMPs (Project United
Management Professionals. (Apologies to PMPs everywhere.)
The chief wanted Hrog to take the certification exam. After
all, he had proven his ability to manage projects, and the exam
only required that he answer a few questions and he would be a
PUMP. The chief would even pay the 400 clams that the associ-
ation charged as a certification fee.
PUMP Certification Erupts
Soon the PUMP certification developed into a huge success.

Clans throughout Europe insisted that their projects be led by
a PUMP, and SOPCAM found itself swamped with applicants
for the exam. The profession grew exponentially. However, with
the success of the program came an unexpected issue. Many of
the newly minted PUMPs were found to be incompetent. They
knew the answers to the exam questions, but many of them had
only shared a tent with a real project manager and had no per-
sonal skills, so they wrecked the jobs they tried to manage. Or
they had been members of a team led by a true manager but had
no skills themselves for leading people, so they also failed.
The World Today
I have framed this little story as a parable for what has hap-
pened to the project management profession since it began to
be recognized in the 1960s. The intent behind certification of
project managers as PMPs (Project Management Professionals)
was good, but the unintended consequence has been exactly what
I have suggested in my fantasy tale. Although PMI® (Project
Management Institute) requires 2,000 hours or more of experi-
ence leading projects, there are large numbers of individuals who
do not meet that requirement. They have passed the written test
only and their supervisors have fraudulently signed off that they
met the work requirement. The reason they have done this is that
some government contracts require that a PMP lead them, and
in order to get those contracts, supervisors need to ensure that
their people get certified. And they can’t wait two years for them
to gain the required experience, so they lie. (I make no apology
if I am stepping on your toes. Not only is it fraud, but it is going
to destroy the reputation of the PMP, which honest people have
worked hard to earn.)
In fact, I am beginning this edition of my book in this way
in hope of drawing attention to this sad situation. I have spent
60 years of my life in project management, first as a working
manager and since 1981 as a teacher and author of books on the
subject. I hate to see the dishonest people undermine what the
people like myself have worked so hard to establish.
Now with that off my chest, let us turn our attention to
detailing the management of projects.
WHAT IS A PROJECT?
The Project Management Institute is the professional association

for project managers (more about them later). In the latest edi-
tion of the Project Management Body of Knowledge, or PMBOK ®
GUIDE, PMI defines a project as “a temporary endeavor under-
taken to produce a unique product, service, or result.” Temporary
means that every project has a definite beginning and end. Unique
means that this product, service, or result is different from others
that may have preceded it.
Unfortunately, textbook definitions often don’t reflect the real
world. There is no doubt that Stonehenge was a project, but it is
doubtful that a fixed finish date could be established, and given
that six phases spanning 1,500 years were required to achieve
the result we see today, there was no temporary nature to it, nor
was the scope well defined. It was unique, so far as we know, and
perhaps the Seer anticipated a specific completion time. We can
only guess.
The thing is, not only was Stonehenge
A project is no textbook project, but many contempo-
“a temporary rary jobs don’t fit the textbook definition
endeavor under- either, yet no one would deny that they are
taken to produce projects. What we can say is that we would
a unique product, like for a job to fit the definition, and it is
service, or result” the job of a project manager to make this
[PMBOK® GUIDE happen to the best of her ability.
(2021)]. In reality, the only part of the defini-
tion that fits all projects is that all of them
are jobs that produce something unique. A repetitive job is not a
project. Neither is performing a single task. Nevertheless, a sub-
stantial number of jobs do qualify as projects, and there are many
people managing them (or at least trying to).
I also feel it is important to point out that if you are on a
single-person job, you can be said to be managing a project but
are not a project manager in the real sense of the term, because
there should be a team involved for it to be called project man-
agement. This is my opinion and not everyone will agree, which
is fine with me.
Now what I do want to emphasize is the importance of proj-
ect management for every organization. You should know first off
that we did not invent the methods or tools of project manage-
ment. They were invented to control manufacturing work. The
work breakdown structure allows for eating an elephant in small
bites, rather than a single large one. Earned value is a standard
cost system to assess manufacturing efficiency, and scheduling

was a way of staging work to get the most output in the least time.
That means that the methods of project management are the only
ones designed to manage work in general, which leads me to say
that all management should be thought of as a derivative of proj-
ect management. This includes the activities of the CEO right on
down the typical hierarchy to the lowest levels of the pyramid.
As for projects themselves, Tom Peters (1999) has argued that
as much as 50 percent of the work done in organizations can be
thought of as projects. I believe that in many organizations, this
number is far greater. This means that, even though not everyone
who is running these operations is called a project manager, these
people are de facto managing projects anyway. And, while they may
not need the formality of critical path schedules and earned value
analysis, they do need some skills in project planning and control.
Dr. J. M. Juran, who was a quality expert, has said that a
project is a problem that is scheduled for solution. I like this defi-
nition because it makes us realize that a project is conducted to
solve a problem for the organization. However, the word problem
almost always conveys something negative. When someone says,
“We have a problem,” that is usually bad news. Environmental
cleanup projects might be thought of as solving the “bad” kind
of problem. But developing a new product or software program
is also a problem—a positive problem. So problem is being used
here in a very broad sense, and projects deal with both kinds of
problems, positive and negative.
WHAT IS PROJECT MANAGEMENT?
The PMBOK ® GUIDE defines project management as “appli-

cation of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project
activities to meet project requirements. Project management is
accomplished through the application and integration of the
project management processes of initiating, planning, executing,
monitoring-and-controlling, and closing.” These processes are
further defined in the PMBOK ® GUIDE, and the objective of this
book is to explain how all of these are accomplished in practice.
I think it is important to mention that these processes do not
fully capture the essence of project management. Much of project
management consists of dealing with political issues, trying to
get team members to perform at the required level, and negoti-
ating for scarce resources. These activities are not really captured
by the PMBOK ® GUIDE processes, and no single document can
do justice to the true complexity of project management. At best,
the guide captures the tools and systems aspects of project man-
agement but not the leadership component.
In fact, this raises an important issue. We need to think more
about project leadership, because in almost all situations project
managers do not “own” their resources. That is, the team mem-
bers do not report directly to the PM. They generally report to a
manager in a functional department and are assigned to the PM
on a dotted-line basis. For that reason, the PM must use leader-
ship skills to get the best performance from team members, and I
will discuss this more fully in a later section of the book.
“INSTANT-PUDDING”
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
In December 1999, I had a meeting with a project manager in

Germany, in which we discussed whether project management
in Germany was the same as it is in the United States. I showed
him my model of project management, which I call The Lewis
Method®, and compared it to his process. We found that his

method and mine were very similar.
“I have been trying to explain project management to senior
management here, but I’m afraid with very little success,” he
said sadly. “In one meeting, one of our vice presidents got very
frustrated and said, ‘I don’t understand why we don’t just buy
Microsoft Project® and do it!’ ” He added, “Meaning, of course,
why don’t we do project management.”
I almost laughed. “It’s the same in the United States,” I
assured him. “Senior managers there also assume that project
management is just scheduling and that if they buy a scheduling
tool for everyone, they will have instant project managers.”
He looked a bit relieved.
“I think we should put the scheduling software in a box and
rename it ‘Instant Project Manager,’ ” I said. “On the side of the
box, the instructions would say, ‘Just add water, stir, shake, bake,
and you will have instant project managers’—sort of an ‘instant-
pudding’ approach to project management.”
He thought for a moment. “That’s what we are doing now,
isn’t it? Practicing instant-pudding project management!”
“Yes,” I agreed. “And I can tell you that this approach is fol-
lowed throughout much of the world.”
TOOLS, PEOPLE, AND SYSTEMS
Project management is not just scheduling.

It is not just tools.
It is not a job position or a job title.
It is not even the sum total of these. But my experience shows
that few people understand this. They believe that project manage-
ment is scheduling and that if a person can do some technical job
(using the word technical in a very broad sense), then that individ-
ual can manage a project (as I pointed out in my parable of Hrog.)
This is a pervasive problem. We forget that there are two
aspects to all work, including projects—the what and the how.
The what is the task to be performed. The how is the process by
which it is performed. But process also applies to how the team
functions overall—how its members communicate, interact, solve
problems, deal with conflict, make decisions, assign work, run
meetings, and every other aspect of team performance. The tools
they use—such as scheduling software, team meeting software
like Teams and Zoom, computers, project notebooks, tablets like
the iPad, and personal digital assistants (PDAs) now in the form
of cellphones—help with both the what and the how. But the tools
do not make an instant project manager of a person who has not
been trained in the how. Rather, good project management is the
joint optimization of three components, as shown in Figure 1.1.
Figure 1.1 Project Management Is Tools, People, and Systems

Organizations and project teams are people. I think we forget

this. An organization has capital equipment, buildings, inven-
tory, and other paraphernalia for the sole purpose of enabling
human beings to do work that will result in desired organiza-
tional outcomes.
Yet managers often focus on everything but people. I have
been told of many managers who are brilliant with computers
but horrible at dealing with people. They are rude, condescend-
ing, and dictatorial. You wonder how such individuals survive in
their jobs, but they do.
In any case, the message should be understood—organizations
are people, and people engage in processes to get results. If the
people do not function well, neither will the processes; and if the
processes don’t work, task outcomes will suffer. The sad thing is
that we know more about how to get performance from capital
equipment than about how to get it from people.
As I have already said, project management deals with tools,
people, and systems. The tools are work breakdown structures,
PERT scheduling, earned value analysis, risk analysis, and
scheduling software (to name a few). And tools are the primary
focus of most organizations that want to implement project
management.
Tools are a necessary but not a sufficient condition for success
in managing projects. The processes or techniques are far more
important, because if you do not employ the correct processes for
managing, the tools will only help you document your failures
with great precision.
A simple example is that you give a person an automobile so
that he can get around, but you give him no training in how to
drive the car. He must learn by trial and error. By the time he has
become a competent driver (if he ever does), he will have battered
up the car badly, and in the process done quite a bit of damage
to others. This is what happens when you give people scheduling
software with no training in how to use it properly.
On the other hand, training someone who has no car how to
drive is a waste. Absent the car, the training is irrelevant.
In short, the PMI definition of project management is not
bad, as long as you understand that you must include dealing
with politics, exercising leadership, and, for good measure, hav-
ing a small dose of public relations expertise.
THE FOUR PROJECT CONSTRAINTS
It has been common to talk about the triple constraints in project

management—performance, time, and cost. Colloquially, they
are often referred to as good, fast, and cheap, and as the saying
goes, “Good, fast, or cheap—pick two.” The point is that you can
dictate only two of them, and the third will have to vary.
When I wrote the first edition of this
SCOPE: the mag- book, I realized that there was a fourth
nitude or size of constraint—scope. The magnitude or size
the project. of the job is also related to the other three
constraints, and I started pointing out that
you could assign values to any three of them, but the fourth must
be allowed to vary. In fact, scope changes probably cause more
missed project deadlines and cost overruns than any other factor
short of defining the project requirements incorrectly to begin
with. These scope changes occur in small increments, which we
refer to as scope creep. Sometimes these are caused by feature creep,
but more often it is because something is forgotten that must be
added for the project to be functional. In any case, the changes
can be nickel in size and add up to many dollars of total impact.
Many people are confused by the term performance, so I want

to clarify it here. A project is intended to produce a result of
some kind. Construction projects produce buildings for people to
occupy, roads for them to travel on, or dams that provide water to
communities. Product development projects provide products for
people to use; software projects do the same.
There are two kinds of performance requirements, which
together are called specifications. One is functional requirements.
These describe what the deliverable is supposed to do. The
other is technical requirements, which describe the features of the
deliverable. They may specify dimensions, weight, color, speed,
horsepower, thrust, or any of a million other specifications that
can apply to a deliverable. As a former engineer, I used to ask if
a change would affect the form, fit, or function of a product. You
can see how this relates to what has just been said.
Defining project requirements is a major aspect of project
definition, and doing so incorrectly or inadequately is, I believe,
the single most common cause of project failures. I was once told
a story by a fellow that illustrates this beautifully. He had a friend
over at his house one day, and they were doing some yard work.
He said to his friend, “You see this small tree in front of my
house? How about trimming the limbs off this tree to a height
about like this?” He indicated what he meant by holding his hand
a certain distance above the ground.
He then left his friend to trim the tree and went to the back
of the house to do some work. When he returned to the front of
the house, his friend had just finished the job. It was nicely done,
except for one significant detail. His friend had cut all the limbs
off the top of the tree, down to the proper height, when what the
fellow wanted was to have the limbs trimmed off the trunk of the
tree from the ground up to the height he had indicated!
What happened here is all too common. “Trim the tree”
meant something different to each of them. We call this a com-
munication problem. And because communication problems
happen so frequently, we had better take care to achieve a shared
understanding of what is supposed to be done in the project. We
will talk about how this is done in Chapter 5.
P = performance requirements, technical and functional

C = labor cost to do the job. (Note that capital equipment
and material costs are accounted for separately from
labor.)
T = time required for the project
S = scope or magnitude of the work
Elsewhere, I have said that project management is the appli-

cation of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project
activities to meet project requirements. These requirements are
defined by the PCTS targets and are the constraints on every
project, no matter how large or how small. Because you can never
escape them, you must understand how they interact.
The relationship between them is given by the following
expression:
C = f (P, T, S)
In other words, cost is a function of performance, time, and
scope. Ideally, this could be written as an exact mathematical
expression. For example,
C = 2P + 3T + 4S
However, we are always estimating the values of these vari-
ables, so their exact relationship is never known.
One way to think of the relationship that exists between the

PCTS constraints is to consider a triangle, as shown in Figure
1.2. P, C, and T are the lengths of the sides, while S is the area.
If I know the lengths of the sides, I can compute the area. Or, if
I know the area and the lengths of two sides, I can compute the
length of the third side.
Figure 1.2 Triangles Showing the PCTS Relationship
What is important about this illustration is that I cannot

arbitrarily assign values to all three sides and the area. If three
variables are specified, the fourth can be determined, but if you
try to assign values to all four, they will “fit” only by accident.
In projects, however, it is common for
the project sponsor or some other manager PRINCIPLE: You
to want to dictate values for all four. This is, can assign values
in fact, a common cause of project failures, to only three of
where failure means not hitting all the tar- the constraints.
gets. As a project manager, it is my job to The fourth will be
tell the sponsor what I need if I am to do a whatever the rela-
project, so consider the most common case, tionship dictates it
in which values for P, T, and S are given. will be.
It is my job to tell the sponsor the cost of the project required to
achieve those targets.
It is also true that when I do so, the sponsor may have heart
failure. The response is often, “My goodness, how can it cost so
much!!?” followed by protests—“We can’t afford it!”
Then my response is, “Tell me what you can afford, and I’ll
tell you what I can do.” This means that either the scope will be
reduced or perhaps the time will be extended. In general, it is not
acceptable to reduce performance. In fact, there is a saying that if
you are late, overspent, scope is less than specified—but the thing
works correctly, you will probably be forgiven. However, if you are
late, overspent and reduced scope—and it doesn’t work, you are in
deep trouble. This means that you can assign priority importance
to the constraints, with performance often being number one.
Notice that this is a common trade-off that we make at home.
We have a list of things that need to be done. The roof is leak-
ing and needs to be repaired before it ruins the house. The car is
making a strange noise. My 13-year-old daughter needs braces
on her teeth, which will cost a bundle. And on and on.
Trouble is, I can’t afford it all.
What am I going to do? I’m going to establish priorities for
the items on the list. If the car quits, I won’t be able to get to work
to make the money to pay for everything, so perhaps it is number
one on the list. The roof comes next. And goodness knows when
I’ll be able to afford braces for my daughter’s teeth. Maybe she will
grow up and pay for them herself, but for now, they must wait.
Of course, there is another option in some cases. You get rid
of the car and take public transportation. This frees up expense
money that can be reallocated. It illustrates that there are often
multiple ways to address a problem.
Interestingly, we are forced to prioritize at home, but in
organizations, we often try to do it all, thereby spreading our
resources too thin, with the result being that nothing gets done
well or on time. (We will return to this issue in the section on
control.) For now, the point is that you can’t have it all, so choices
must be made, and my job is to help my boss or sponsor make
those choices by providing the best information I can on what is
needed to do the project.
THE TIME-COST TRADE-OFF
In today’s “hurry-up” world, the heat is on to finish projects in

record time. This is due in part to the pressures of competition,
especially in developing products, software, or new services. If
you take too long to get it done, the competition will get there
first, and the first to market with a new product often captures
60 to 70 percent of the market, leaving the rest of the pack to
pick up the scraps.
Furthermore, there is pressure to reduce the cost to do the
job. Again, this is partly because costs continue to rise over
time and also because if you can develop something faster and
cheaper while leaving the scope and performance constant, you
can recover your investment sooner and protect yourself from
the dynamics of the marketplace. (We will examine this in more
detail in Chapter 14.)
Look now at the time-cost trade-off curve shown in Figure
1.3. Notice that there is some duration for a project in which
costs are at a minimum. That is, there is an optimum duration.
The problem is, we seldom know just what that duration is, but
we aren’t too concerned about it.
What is important is to note that going past that point
(extending the duration) causes project costs to rise, because you
are being inefficient. You are taking too long to do the work.
Figure 1.3 Time-Cost Trade-Off Curve
To the left of the minimum cost point, we are trying to reduce

the time needed for the job. The common term for this is that we
are trying to “crash” the project. That doesn’t mean that we are
trying to destroy it, but rather that we are trying to do it faster
than the optimum time.
You can see that costs start to rise as you reduce time, and
they rise very steeply. This is because we usually speed up a proj-
ect by assigning more resources to it. In common language, we
“throw bodies at it.”
The difficulty is that, as we throw more bodies at a project,
they begin to get in each other’s way. The work can be subdivided
only so far, and we hit what is called the point of diminishing
returns. One way to think of this is that if one person can do
something in 10 hours, two people won’t be able to do the same
job in 5 hours. It may take 6. And four people may take 4 hours.
We don’t get a linear gain in time.
In addition, there is a lower limit below which you cannot
go, no matter how many people you put on the job. I call this the
“forbidden zone.” Naturally, there is always someone who thinks
that if you just put enough people on a project, you can get it
done in almost zero time, but that is simply not true.
Further, there is a principle called
Brooks’s Law, originally specified for soft- BROOKS’S LAW
ware projects, that says, “Adding people to Adding people to
an already late project may only make it an already late
later.” I believe that this principle applies to project may only
all kinds of projects—not just software. make it later.
Worse than that, you can destroy a —Fred Brooks, 1975
project by adding people at the wrong time.
This is shown in Figure 1.4. If you add someone new to the proj-
ect, that person must be “brought up to speed.”
Figure 1.4 The Rework Spiral

That means that orientation and training are needed. Who is
going to do the training?
You, most likely, but perhaps some other member of the team.
No matter who does it, that person’s productivity will drop. To
keep from delaying the job, that person will have to work overtime.
In doing so, she will get tired, thus losing more ground. She will
probably also make more errors, which means that she will have to
correct them. This is called rework. As rework increases, she will
have to work more overtime to keep up, thus getting more tired,
which causes more errors, which increases rework, ad nauseum.
In other words, the project is likely to spiral downward, out
of control. The message is, be very careful about adding people to
help get the job done on time.
If You Always Do What You’ve Always Done
Now let’s come back to the pressures that we feel to get the job
done faster and cheaper at the same time. The time-cost trade-
off curve shows that, if you are below the minimum point on
the curve, crashing the project costs more
If you always money. Yet we are being told to reduce
do what you’ve costs and time simultaneously! Are we
always done, being set up?
you’ll always Maybe.
get what you’ve There is a saying in psychology, “If you
always got. always do what you’ve always done, you’ll
always get what you’ve always got.”
And there is a corollary. “Insanity is continuing to do what
you’ve always done and hoping for a different result.”
The message is that, if what you’re doing isn’t working, you
have to change the way you’re doing it. That is, you must change
the process. In fact, that is what formal proj- Insanity is con-

ect management is all about. tinuing to do what
Many of you have been managing proj- you’ve always
ects for a long time in an informal way. I done and hoping
call that “seat-of-the-pants” project man- for a different
agement, and I know about it because I did result.
project management that way for about 10
years. Why? Because I didn’t know any other way.
And I got the job done—usually to everyone’s satisfaction.
The trouble is, we didn’t know that the work could be done
better.
Can formal project management (a change in process) really
help you get the job done faster and cheaper at the same time?
I believe so.
It is estimated that about one-third of the cost of doing many
projects is rework. As someone has said,
that is equivalent to having one of every PRINCIPLE: If
three people on the job working full time what you’re doing
just to redo what the other two people did isn’t working, you
wrong in the first place. That means, of need to change
course, that the cost is extremely high. the process by
Why all the rework? which it is done.
I think it is safe to say that it is the result
of taking a ready-fire-aim approach to the project. The job is ill
conceived, poorly defined, and inadequately planned. Everyone
just wants to “get the job done.”
It is said that haste makes waste. It is very true. But in our
hurry-up-and-get-it-done world, there is little patience with
“wasting time” on all that planning. So the result is rework,
which is 100 percent waste.
I would suggest that, if you find a way to measure it, you will
find that the rework in your projects ranges from 5 to 40 percent.
As I have heard Tom Peters say on a tape (I forget which one), this
is a good-news, bad-news story. The bad news is that it can be so
high. The good news is that there is lots of room for improvement!
The nice thing about measuring rework is that you can show
progress fairly soon. If you try to do baseline comparisons, you
often find that baseline data for previous projects does not exist.
With rework, you simply plot trend graphs. Such a graph is
shown in Figure 1.5.
Figure 1.5 Trend Graph Showing Rework Declining
As proof of what I’m saying, I had a client who worked for a

large university managing their design and construction depart-
ment. He had me conduct my training programs on project
management and team leadership and then began to practice
the methods. One of the rework costs in construction projects
is called change orders. These are usually the result of inadequate
or no planning at all. To see if there were improvements, my

client began to track the cost of change orders. He found, over
five years, that they dropped so much that they saved $5 million
over previous years before they began practicing formal project
management.
Quality
I have always considered this to be the forgotten aspect of project

management. It has to do with the performance constraint. If the
functional and technical requirements of the job are not met, you
have done a poor-quality job. Essentially, performance is synon-
ymous with quality.
If you put people under pressure to get the job done fast, and
you won’t allow them to reduce the scope, then you can almost
bet that they will sacrifice quality in the process. Furthermore, as
a former quality manager at ITT, I learned that if you improve
quality, you get jobs done faster and cheaper, so in addition to
improving processes, we must improve quality. In fact, the two
go hand in hand.
In the past, quality has been defined in two primary ways.
One was that quality was conformance to specifications. Another
was that quality was meeting customer requirements or some-
times we say the product is fit for use. Of course, specifications
should be written so that if you meet them, you meet customer
requirements. Thus, the second definition could be said to be the
better of the two.
In the development of the Six Sigma approach to quality at
Motorola, a new definition of quality was also developed. This
definition says that quality is a state in which value entitlement is
realized for the customer and provider in every aspect of the business
relationship (Harry & Schroeder, 2000, p. 6). This new defini-
tion recognizes the profit motive of every for-profit organization,
whereas the old definitions focused only on the customer.
Harry and Schroeder say that most organizations are pro-
ducing product and service quality levels of about three sigma.
This refers to the number of errors that occur in a given num-
ber of opportunities. For 1,000,000 opportunities, a three sigma
level will yield 66,807 errors. At six sigma, there will only be 3.4
errors in 1,000,000 opportunities!
They also say that a three sigma quality level means that of
every sales dollar earned by the organization, approximately 25
to 30 percent (or 25 to 30 cents) is lost because of poor quality.
This is called the cost of poor quality (COPQ ). Most executives
think that the COPQ is only a few percent and are horrified to
learn that it is this high.
That cost comes from three factors: prevention, appraisal, and
failure (PAF). Prevention is anything that we do to keep errors
from happening in the first place. As an example of this, Alan
Mulally, director of engineering at Boeing when the 777 airplane
was being designed (he was CEO at Ford Motor Company from
2006 to 2014), explains how toy company Fisher-Price makes the
assembly of their model airplanes foolproof so that you can put
them together with no hassle. “Fisher-Price makes a little notch
in their wheels so that you can only put the right wheel on the
right hub, and you can only put the left wheel on the left hub”
(Sabbagh, 1996). This approach has been used by the Japanese in
manufacturing processes for years.
Appraisal cost results from the inspection of a finished part
to be sure that no errors have been made. A basic given in qual-
ity is that you cannot inspect quality into a product—it must be
designed in and built in to begin with. In fact, the work with Six
Sigma programs has shown that “80 percent of quality problems
are actually designed into the product without any conscious

attempt to do so” (Harry & Schroeder, 2000, p. 36). When the
problem is designed into the product, you can’t inspect it out.
Failure cost is incurred once the product leaves the plant and
reaches the customer. It includes warranty costs, repair costs, and
so on. And something that is almost impossible to track, but is a
part of failure cost, nonetheless, is lost customers.
The important thing to note is that an increase in the amount
of money spent on prevention leads to significant reductions in
appraisal and failure costs. This is shown in Figure 1.6. Most of our
quality costs should go into prevention so that we reap significant
savings in the other two areas. If you want to see how significant
these savings can be, I suggest that you read Harry and Schroeder.
Figure 1.6 Reduction in Total Cost of Quality When Prevention Is

Increased
As for projects, if you improve your processes so that qual-

ity is improved, then you will also reduce the time and cost of
project work simultaneously. Again, this is because you eliminate
rework, which adds no value to the project. Large gains can be
made if more attention is paid to quality improvement in projects.
Have Your Cake and Eat It Too
In Figure 1.2, I showed the relationship between P, C, T, and S

as a triangle and said that these are the quadruple constraints of
a project. There is a problem with using a triangle as an analogy.
Suppose I want to hold P, C, and T constant and increase the
scope of the job. Based on the triangle analogy, this is impos-
sible. If I increase scope, at least one of the three sides of the
triangle must get longer.
However, if I think of the triangle as being drawn on the sur-
face of a sphere, then this is no longer true. If I change the radius
of the sphere, it will change the area bounded by P, C, and T.
Figure 1.7 shows a sphere with a spherical triangle drawn on
it, and inside the spherical triangle, I have also drawn a plane
triangle. If I assume that the sides of both the spherical and the
plane triangle are the same lengths, then the spherical triangle
has a greater area, which represents project scope, so the scope
has been increased while holding the sides of the triangle to con-
stant lengths.* What does the radius of the sphere represent?
I suspect it is a measure of how well the process works.
* For the mathematically inclined, the drawing is, of course, not correct, but I am trying
to explain the concept in simple terms for the benefit of those readers who have no back-
ground in spherical geometry.
Another random document with
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agog to be at a thing, and then, when you think her settled to half-an-
hour’s pleasant play, off she is like any butterfly. She says her, ‘How
doth the little busy bee,’ dutifully, but when I tell her she is not a bit
like a busy bee, but rather like a foolish, flitting butterfly, I’m afraid
she rather likes it, and makes up to the butterflies as if they were
akin to her, and were having just the good time she would prefer. But
you must come and see the child to understand how volatile she is.
“‘Oh, mother, please let me have a good doll’s wash this
afternoon; I’m quite unhappy about poor Peggy! I really think she
likes to be dirty!’
“Great preparations follow in the way of little tub, and soap, and
big apron; the little laundress sits down, greatly pleased with herself,
to undress her dirty Peggy; but hardly is the second arm out of its
sleeve, than, presto! a new idea; off goes Kitty to clean out her doll’s-
house, deaf to all nurse’s remonstrances about ‘nice hot water,’ and
‘poor dirty Peggy.’
“I’m afraid the child is no more constant to her loves than to her
play; she is a loving little soul, as you know, and is always adoring
somebody. Now it’s her father, now Juno, now me, now Hugh; and
the rain of warm kisses, the soft clasping arms, the nestling head,
are delicious, whether to dog or man. But, alas! Kitty’s
blandishments are a whistle you must pay for; to-morrow it is
somebody else’s turn, and the bad part is that she has only room for
one at a time. If we could get a little visit from you, now, Kitty would
be in your pocket all day long; and we, even Peggy, would be left out
in the cold. But do not flatter yourself it would last; I think none of
Kitty’s attachments has been known to last longer than two days.
“If the chief business of parents is to train character in their
children, we have done nothing for Kitty; at six years old the child
has no more power of application, no more habit of attention, is no
more able to make herself do the thing she ought to do, indeed, has
no more desire to do the right thing, than she had at six months old.
We are getting very unhappy about it. My husband feels strongly that
parents should labour at character as the Hindoo gold-beater labours
at his vase; that character is the one thing we are called upon to
effect. And what have we done for Kitty? We have turned out a ‘fine
animal,’ and are glad and thankful for that; but that is all; the child is
as wayward, as unsteady, as a young colt. Do help us, dear aunt.
Think our little girl’s case over; if you can, get at the source of the
mischief, and send us a few hints for our guidance, and we shall be
yours gratefully evermore.”
“And now for my poor little great-niece! Her mother piles up

charges against her, but how interesting and amusing and like the
free world of fairy-land it would all be were it not for the tendencies
which, in these days, we talk much about and watch little against.
We bring up our children in the easiest, happy-go-lucky way, and all
the time talk solemnly in big words about the momentous importance
of every influence brought to bear upon them. But it is true; these
naughty, winsome ways of Kitty’s will end in her growing up like half
the ‘girls’—that is, young women—one meets. They talk glibly on
many subjects; but test them, and they know nothing of any; they are
ready to undertake anything, but they carry nothing through. This
week, So-and-so is their most particular friend, next week such
another; even their amusements, their one real interest, fail and flag;
but then, there is some useful thing to be learnt—how to set tiles or
play the banjo! And, all the time, there is no denying, as you say, that
this very fickleness has a charm, so long as the glamour of youth
lasts, and the wayward girl has bright smiles and winning, graceful
ways to disarm you with. But youth does not last; and the poor girl,
who began as a butterfly, ends as a grub, tied to the earth by the
duties she never learnt how to fulfil; that is, supposing she is a girl
with a conscience; wanting that, she dances through life whatever
befalls; children, husband, home, must take their chance. ‘What a
giddy old grandmother the Peterfields have!’ remarked a pert young
man of my acquaintance. But, indeed, the ‘giddy old grandmother’ is
not an unknown quantity.
“Are you saying to yourself, a prosy old ‘great-aunt’ is as bad as a
‘giddy old grandmother’? I really have prosed abominably, but Kitty
has been on my mind all the time, and it is quite true, you must take
her in hand.
“First, as to her lessons: you must help her to gain the power of
attention; that should have been done long ago, but better late than
never, and an aunt who has given her mind to these matters takes
blame to herself for not having seen the want sooner. ‘But,’ I fancy
you are saying, ‘if the child has no faculty of attention, how can we
give it to her? It’s just a natural defect.’ Not a bit of it! Attention is not
a faculty at all, though I believe it is worth more than all the so-called
faculties put together; this, at any rate, is true, that no talent, no
genius, is worth much without the power of attention; and this is the
power which makes men or women successful in life.
“Attention is no more than this—the power of giving your mind to
what you are about—the bigger the better so far as the mind goes,
and great minds do great things; but have you never known a person
with a great mind, ‘real genius,’ his friends say, who goes through life
without accomplishing anything? It is just because he wants the
power to ‘turn on,’ so to speak, the whole of his great mind; he is
unable to bring the whole of his power to bear on the subject in
hand. ‘But Kitty?’ Yes, Kitty must get this power of ‘turning on.’ She
must be taught to give her mind to sums and reading, and even to
dusters. Go slowly; a little to-day and a little more to-morrow. In the
first place, her lessons must be made interesting. Do not let her
scramble through a page of ‘reading,’ for instance, spelling every
third word and then waiting to be told what it spells, but see that
every day she learns a certain number of new words—six, twelve,
twenty, as she is able to hear them; not ‘spellings’—terrible
invention!—but words that occur in a few lines of some book of
stories or rhymes; and these she should know, not by spelling, but by
sight. It does not matter whether the new words be long or short, in
one syllable or in four, but let them be interesting words. For
instance, suppose her task for to-day be ‘Little Jack Horner,’ she
should learn to know, by sight, thumb, plum, Christmas, corner, &c.,
before she begins to read the rhyme; make ‘plum’ with her loose
letters, print it on her slate, let her find it elsewhere in her book, any
device you can think of, so that ‘plum’ is brought before her eyes
half-a-dozen times, and each time recognised and named. Then,
when it comes in the reading lesson, it is an old friend, read off with
delight. Let every day bring the complete mastery of a few new
words, as well as the keeping up of the old ones. At the rate of only
six a day she will learn, say, fifteen hundred in a year; in other words,
she will have learned to read! And if it do not prove to be reading
without tears and reading with attention, I shall not presume to make
another suggestion about the dear little girl’s education.
“But do not let the lesson last more than ten minutes, and insist,
with brisk, bright determination, on the child’s full concentrated
attention of eye and mind for the whole ten minutes. Do not allow a
moment’s dawdling at lessons.
“I would not give her rows of figures to add yet; use dominoes or
the domino cards prepared for the purpose, the point being to add or
subtract the dots on the two halves in a twinkling. You will find that
the three can work together at this as at the reading, and the children
will find it as exciting and delightful as ‘old soldier.’ Kitty will be all
alive here, and will take her share of work merrily; and this is a point
gained. Do not, if you can help it, single the little maid out from the
rest and throw her on her own responsibility. ’Tis a ‘heavy and a
weary weight’ for the bravest of us, and the little back will get a trick
of bending under life if you do not train her to carry it lightly, as an
Eastern woman her pitcher.
“Then, vary the lessons; now head, and now hands; now tripping
feet and tuneful tongue; but in every lesson let Kitty and the other
two carry away the joyous sense of—
‘Something attempted, something done.’
“Allow of no droning wearily over the old stale work,—which must

be kept up all the time, it is true, but rather by way of an exciting
game than as the lesson of the day, which should always be a
distinct step that the children can recognise.
“You have no notion, until you try, how the ‘now-or-never’ feeling
about a lesson quickens the attention of even the most volatile child;
what you can drone through all day, you will; what must be done, is
done. Then, there is a by-the-way gain besides that of quickened
attention. I once heard a wise man say that, if he must choose
between the two, he would rather his child should learn the meaning
of ‘must’ than inherit a fortune. And here you will be able to bring
moral force to bear on wayward Kitty. Every lesson must have its
own time, and no other time in this world is there for it. The sense of
the preciousness of time, of the irreparable loss when a ten minutes’
lesson is thrown away, must be brought home.
“Let your own unaffected distress at the loss of ‘golden minutes’
be felt by the children, and also be visited upon them by the loss of
some small childish pleasure which the day should have held. It is a
sad thing to let a child dawdle through a day and be let off scot-free.
You see, I am talking of the children, and not of Kitty alone, because
it is so much easier to be good in company; and what is good for her
will be good for the trio.
“But there are other charges: poor Kitty is neither steady in play
nor steadfast in love! May not the habit of attending to her lessons
help her to stick to her play? Then, encourage her. ‘What! The doll’s
tea-party over! That’s not the way grown-up ladies have tea; they sit
and talk for a long time. See if you can make your tea-party last
twenty minutes by my watch!’ This failing of Kitty’s is just a case
where a little gentle ridicule might do a great deal of good. It is a
weapon to be handled warily, for one child may resent, and another
take pleasure in being laughed at; but managed with tact I do believe
it’s good for children and grown-ups to see the comic side of their
doings.
“I think we err in not enough holding up certain virtues for our
children’s admiration. Put a premium of praise on every finished
thing, if it is only a house of cards. Steadiness in work is a step on
the way towards steadfastness in love. Here, too, the praise of
constancy might very well go with good-humoured family ‘chaff,’ not
about the new loves, which are lawful, whether of kitten or playmate,
but about the discarded old loves. Let Kitty and all of them grow up
to glory in their constancy to every friend.
“There, I am sending you a notable preachment instead of the few
delicate hints I meant to offer; but never mount a woman on her
hobby—who knows when she will get off again?”
CHAPTER III
AN EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT
You wish me to tell you the story of my little girl? Well, to begin at the
beginning. In looking back through the pages of my journal I find
many scattered notices of Agnes, and I always write of her, I find, as
“poor Agnes.” Now, I wonder why? The child is certainly neither
unhealthy nor unhappy—at least, not with any reason; but again and
again I find this sort of entry:—
“Agnes displeased with her porridge; says nothing, but looks
black all day.”
“Harry upset his sister’s work-basket, by accident, I truly believe,
but she can’t get over it; speaks to no one, and looks as if under a
cloud.”
I need not go on; the fact is, the child is sensible of many injuries
heaped upon her; I think there is no ground for the feeling, for she is
really very sweet when she has not, as the children say, the black
dog on her back.
It is quite plain to me, and to others also, I think, that we have let
this sort of thing go on too long without dealing with it. We must take
the matter in hand.
Please God, our little Agnes must not grow up in this sullen habit,
for all our sakes, but chiefly for her own, poor child; I felt that in this
matter I might be of more use than Edward, who simply does not
understand a temper less sunny and open than his own. I pondered
and pondered, and, at last, some light broke in upon me. I thought I
should get hold of one principle at a time, work that out thoroughly,
and then take up the next, and so on, until all the springs of
sullenness were exhausted, and all supplies from without stopped. I
was beginning to suspect that the laws of habit worked here as
elsewhere, and that, if I could get our dear child to pass, say, six
weeks without a “fallen countenance,” she might lose this distressing
failing for life.
I meant to take most of the trouble of this experiment upon
myself, but somehow I never can do anything without consulting my
husband. I think men have clearer heads than we women; that is,
they can see both sides of a question and are not carried off their
feet by the one side presented to them.
“Well, Edward, our little Agnes does not get over her sulky fits; in
fact, they last longer, and are harder to get out of than ever!”
“Poor little girl! It is unhappy for her and for all of us. But don’t you
think it is a sort of childish malaise she will soon grow out of?”
“Now, have you not said, again and again, that a childish fault, left
to itself, can do no other than strengthen?”
“True; I suppose the fact is I am slow to realise the fault. But you
are right. From the point of view of habit we are pledged to deal with
it. Have you made any plans?”
“Yes; I have been trying to work the thing out on your lines. We
must watch the rise of the sullen cloud, and change her thoughts
before she has time to realise that the black fit is coming.”
“You are right; if we can keep the child for only a week without this
settling of the cloud, the mere habit would be somewhat broken.”
We had not to wait for our opportunity. At breakfast next day—
whether Harry’s porridge looked more inviting than her own, or
whether he should not have been helped first, or whether the child
had a little pain of which she was hardly aware—suddenly, her eyes
fell, brows dropped, lips pouted, the whole face became slightly paler
than before, the figure limp, limbs lax, hands nerveless—and our
gentle child was transformed, become entirely unlovable. So far, her
feelings were in the emotional stage; her injury, whatever it was, had
not yet taken shape in her thoughts; she could not have told you
what was the matter, because she did not know; but very soon the
thinking brain would come to the aid of the quick emotions, and then
she would be sulky of fixed purpose. Her father saw the symptoms
rise and knew what that would lead to, and, with the promptness
which has often saved us, he cried out—
“Agnes, come here, and hold up your pinafore!” and Agnes trotted
up to his side, her pinafore held up very much to receive the morning
dole of crumbs for the birds; presently, she came back radiant with
the joy of having given the birds a good breakfast, and we had no
more sulky fits that day. This went on for a fortnight or so, with fair
but not perfect success. Whenever her father or I was present, we
caught the emotion before the child was conscious of it, and
succeeded in turning her thoughts into some pleasant channel. But
poor nurse has had bad hours with Agnes; there would sit the child,
pale and silent, for hours together, doing nothing because she liked
to do it, but only because she was made. And, once the fit had
settled down, thick and steady as a London fog, neither her father
nor I could help in the least. Oh, the inconceivable settled cloudiness
and irresponsiveness of that sweet child face!
Our tactics were at fault. No doubt they helped so far as they
went. We managed to secure bright days that might otherwise have
been cloudy when we happened to be present at the first rise of the
sullen mood. But it seemed impossible to bring about so long an
abstinence from sullen fits as would eradicate the habit. We pictured
to ourselves the dreary life that lay before our pretty little girl; the sort
of insulation, the distrust of her sweetness, to which even one such
sullen fit would give rise; worse, the isolation which accompanies this
sort of temper, and the anguish of repentance to follow. And then, I
know, madness is often bred of this strong sense of injured
personality.
It is not a pleasant thing to look an evil in the face. Whether or no
“a little knowledge is a dangerous,” certainly, it is a trying thing. If we
could only have contented ourselves with, “Oh, she’ll grow out of it
by-and-by,” we could have put up with even a daily cloud. But these
forecasts of our little girl’s future made the saving of the child at any
cost our most anxious care.
“I’ll tell you what, Mary; we must strike out a new line. In a general
way, I do believe it’s best to deal with a child’s faults without making
him aware that he has them. It fills the little beings with a ridiculous
sense of importance to have anything belonging to them, even a
fault. But in this case, I think, we shall have to strike home and deal
with the cause at least as much as with the effects, and that, chiefly,
because we have not effects entirely under our control.”
“But, Edward, what if there is no cure? What if this odious temper
were hereditary—our precious child’s inheritance from those who
should have brought her only good?”
“Poor little wife! so this is how it looks to you. You women are
sensitive creatures. Why, do you know, it never occurred to me that it
might be all my fault. Well, I will not laugh at the fancy. Let us take it
seriously, even if, as it seems to me, a little morbid. Let us suppose
that this sad sullenness of which I hear so much and see so little, is,
indeed, Agnes’s inheritance from her mother—may she only inherit
all the rest, and happy the man whose life she blesses! The question
is not ‘How has it come?’ but ‘How are we to deal with it?’—equally,
you and I. Poor things! It’s but a very half-and-half kind of matrimony
if each is to pick out his or her own particular bundle of failings, and
deal with it single-handed. This poor man finds the prospect too
much for him! As a matter of fact, though, I believe that every failing
of mind, body, temper, and what not, is a matter of inheritance, and
that each parent’s particular business in life is to pass his family
forward freed from that particular vicious tendency which has been
his own bane—or hers, if you prefer it.”
“Well, dear, do as you will; I feel that you know best. What it would
be in these days of greater insight to be married to a man who would
say, ‘There, that boy may thank his mother’ for this or the other
failure. Of course, the thing is done now, but more often than not as
a random guess.”
“To return to Agnes. I think we shall have to show her to herself in
this matter, to rake up the ugly feeling, however involuntary, and let
her see how hateful it is. Yes, I do not wonder you shrink from this.
So do I. It will destroy the child’s unconsciousness.”
“Oh, Edward, how I dread to poke into the poor little wounded
heart, and bring up worse things to startle her!”
“I am sorry for you, dear, but I think it must be done; and don’t you
think you are the person to do it? While they have a mother I don’t
think I could presume to poke too much into the secrets of the
children’s hearts.”
“I’ll try; but if I get into a mess you must help me through.”
The opportunity came soon enough. It was pears this time. Harry
would never have known whether he had the biggest or the least.
But we had told nurse to be especially careful in this matter. “Each of
the children must have the biggest or best as often as one another,
but there must be no fuss, no taking turns, about such trifles.
Therefore, very rightly, you gave Harry the bigger and Agnes the
smaller pear.”
Agnes’s pear was not touched; there the child sat, without word or
sob, but all gathered into herself, like a sea anemone whose
tentacles have been touched. The stillness, whiteness, and brooding
sullenness of the face, the limp figure and desolate attitude, would
have made me take the little being to my heart if I had not too often
failed to reach her in this way. This went on all day, all of us
suffering; and in the evening, when I went to hear the children’s
prayers before bed, I meant to have it out.
We were both frozen up with sadness, and the weary little one
was ready to creep into her mother’s heart again. But I must not let
her yet.
“So my poor Agnes has had a very sad day?”
“Yes, mother,” with a little quivering sob.
“And do you know we have all had a very sad day,—father,
mother, your little brother, nurse—every one of us has felt as if a
black curtain had been hung up to shut out the sunshine?”
The child was sympathetic, and shivered at the sight of the black
curtain and the warm sunshine shut out.
“And do you know who has put us all out in the dark and the cold?
Our little girl drew the curtain, because she would not speak to any
of us, or be kind to any of us, or love any of us all the day long; so
we could not get into the sunshine, and have been shivering and sad
in the cold.”
“Mother, mother!” with gasping sobs; “not you and father?”
“Ah! I thought my little girl would be sorry. Now let us try to find out
how it all happened. Is it possible that Agnes noticed that her
brother’s pear was larger than her own?”
“Oh, mother, how could I?” And the poor little face was hidden in
her mother’s breast, and the outbreak of sobs that followed was too
painful. I feared it might mean actual illness for the sensitive little
soul. I think it was the right thing to do; but I had barely courage
enough to leave the results in more loving hands.
“Never mind; don’t cry any more, darling, and we will ask our
Father above to forgive and forget all about it. Mother knows that her
dear little Agnes will try not to love herself best any more. And then
the black curtain will never fall, and we shall never again be a whole
long day standing sadly out in the cold. Good-night from mother, and
another sweet good-night from father.”
The treatment seems to answer. On the slightest return of the old
sullen symptoms we show our little girl what they mean. But the grief
that follows is so painful that I’m afraid we could not go on with it for
the sake of the child’s health. But, happily, we very rarely see a sulky
face now; and when we do we turn and look upon our child, and the
look melts her, until she is all gentleness, penitence, and love.
CHAPTER IV
DOROTHY ELMORE’S ACHIEVEMENT: A

FORECAST
Part I
I know of no happier moment for parents than that when their eldest
daughter returns from school to take her place finally by her mother’s
side. It was two years that very day since we had seen Dorothy
when her father set out for Lausanne to bring her home; and how the
children and I got through the few days of his absence, I don’t know.
The last touches had been put, many times over, to her rooms—not
the plain little room she had left, but a dainty bower for our young
maiden, a little sitting-room opening into a pure nest of a bedroom.
Our eyes met, her father’s and mine, and moistened as we conjured
up I don’t know what visions of pure young life to be lived there, the
virginal prayers to be offered at the little prayer table, the gaiety of
heart that should, from this nook, bubble over the house, and, who
knows, by-and-by, the dreams of young love which should come to
glorify the two little rooms.
Two or three times already had the children put fresh flowers into
everything that would hold a flower. Pretty frocks and sweet faces,
bright hair and bright eyes, had been ready this long time to meet
sister Dorothy.
At last, a telegram from Dover—“Home by five”—and our
restlessness subsided into a hush of expectation.
The sound of wheels on the gravel, and we flew to the hall door
and stood in two files, children and maids, Rover and Floss, waiting
to welcome the child of the house. Then, a lovely face, glad to tears,
looking out of a nest of furs; then, a light leap, almost before the
carriage drew up, and I had her in my arms, my Dorothy, the child of
my heart! The order of the day was “high tea,” to which every one,
down to baby May, sat up. We two, her father and I, gave her up to
the children, only exchanging notes by the species of telegraphy
married folk understand.
“Indubitably lovely!” said her father’s eyes; “And what grace—
what an elegant girl she is!” answered mine; “And do but see what
tact she shows with the little ones;” “And notice the way she has with
us, as if her heart were brimming with reverence and affection.”
Thus, we two with our eyes. For a week or more we could not settle
down. As it was the Christmas holidays, we had not Miss Grimshaw
to keep us in order, and so it happened that wherever Dorothy ran,—
no, she went with a quick noiseless step, but never ran,—about the
house to find out the old dear nooks, we all followed; a troop of
children with their mother in the rear; their father too, if he happened
to be in. Truly we were a ridiculous family, and did our best to turn
the child’s head. Every much has its more-so. Dorothy’s two special
partisans were Elsie, our fifteen years old girl, fast treading in her
sister’s steps, and Herbert, our eldest son, soon to go to college.
Elsie would come to my room and discourse by the hour, her text
being ever, “Dorothy says.” And as for Herbs, it was pleasant to see
his budding manhood express itself in all sorts of little attentions to
his lovely sister.
For lovely she was; there could not be two opinions on that point.
A lilymaid, tall and graceful, without a trace of awkwardness or self
consciousness; the exquisite complexion of the Elmores (they are a
Devonshire family), warm, lovely rose on pearly white, no hint of
brunette colouring; a smile which meant spring and love and other
good things; and deep blue eyes reflecting the light of her smile.
Never, not even during the raptures of early married life, have I
known a month of such joyous exhilaration as that which followed
Dorothy’s return, and I think her father would own as much.
What a month it was! There was the pleasant earthly joy of going
to town to get frocks for Dorothy; then the bewilderment of not being
able to find out what suited her best.
“Anything becomes her!” exclaims Mdme. la Modiste; “that figure,
that complexion, may wear anything.”
And then, the pleasure of entering a room—all eyes bent upon us
in kindliness; our dear old friends hurrying forward to make much of
the child; the deference and gentleness of her manner to these, and
the warmth with which she was received by her compeers, both
maidens and men; her grace in the dance; her simplicity in
conversation; the perfection of her manner, which was not manner at
all, but her own nature, in every situation. After all, she liked best to
be at home; was more amiable and lovely with father and mother,
brothers and sisters, than with the most fascinating strangers. Our
good child! We had grown a little shy of speaking to her about the
best things, but we knew she said her prayers: how else this outflow
of sweet maiden life upon us all?
I can imagine these ramblings of mine falling into the hands of a
young pair whose life is in each other:—“Oh, only the outpourings of
a doting mother!” and they toss the pages aside. But never believe,
young people, that yours are the only ecstatic moments, yours the
only experiences worth recording; wait and see.
Part II
These happy days had lasted for a month or more, when, one
bright day in February, I remember it well, a little cloud arose. This is
how it was: Dorothy had promised Elsie that she would drive her in
the pony-carriage to Banford to choose a doll for May’s birthday.
Now, it happened that I wanted the little carriage to take to my
“Mothers” at Ditchling the clothing I had bought in London with their
club money. My errand could not be deferred; it must be done that
day or a week later. But I did not see why the children’s commission
would not do as well to-morrow; and so I said, in good faith, as I was
stepping into the carriage, hardly noticing the silence with which my
remark was received.
I came home tired, after a long afternoon, looking forward to the
welcome of the girls. The two seniors were sitting in the firelight,
bright enough just then to show me Dorothy sitting limp and pale in a
low chair, and Elsie watching her with a perplexed and anxious
expression. Dorothy did look up to say, “Are you tired, mother?” but
only her eyes looked, there was nothing behind them.
“You look tired and cold enough, my dear; what has been the
matter?”
“Oh, I’m very well, thank you; but I am tired, I think I’ll go to bed.”
And she held up a cold cheek for the mother’s kiss for which she
offered no return.
Elsie and I gazed at one another in consternation; our fairy
princess, our idol (was it indeed so?) What had come to her?
“What is the matter with Dorothy? Has she a headache?”
“Oh, mother, I don’t know,” said the poor child, on the verge of
tears. “She has been like this ever since you went, saying ‘Yes,’ and
‘No,’ and ‘No, thank you,’ quite kindly, but never saying a word of
herself. Has any one been grieving our Dorothy, or is she going to be
ill? Oh, mother, mother!”
“Nay, child, don’t cry. Dorothy is overdone; you know she has
been out twice this week, and three times last, and late hours don’t
suit her. We must take better care of her, that’s all.”
Elsie was comforted, but not so her mother. I believed every word
I had said to the child; but all the time there was a stir in my heart
like the rustling of a snake in the grass. But I put it from me.
It was with a hidden fear that I came down to breakfast. Dorothy
was in the room already doing the little duties of the breakfast table.
But she was pale and still; her hands moved, her figure hung, in the
limp way I had noticed the night before. Her cheek, a cold “Good-
morning, mother,” and a smile on her lips that brought no light to her
eyes, was all the morning salutation I got. Breakfast was an
uncomfortable, constrained meal. The children wondered what was
the matter, and nobody knew. Her father got on best with Dorothy for
he knew nothing of the evening’s history, so he petted her as usual,
making all the more of her for her pale looks.
For a whole week this went on, and never once was I allowed to
meet Dorothy eye to eye. The children were hardly better served, for
they, too, had noticed something amiss; only her father could win
any of the old friendliness, because he treated her as the Dorothy
who had come home to us, only a little done up.
“We must have the doctor for that child, wife. Don’t you see how
she is losing flesh, and how the roses she brought home are fading?
She has no appetite and no spirits. But, why, you surely don’t think
our dainty moth has burned her wings already? There’s nobody
here, unless it’s young Gardiner, and she would never waste herself
on a gawky lad like that!”
This was a new idea, and I stopped a moment to consider, for I
knew of at least half-a-dozen young men who had been attentive to
Dorothy, all to be preferred to this hobbledehoy young Gardiner. But,
no! I could trace the change from the moment of my return from
Ditchling. But I jumped at the notion of the doctor; it would, at any
rate, take her out of herself, and—we should see.
The doctor came; said she wanted tone; advised, not physic, but
fresh air, exercise, and early hours. So we all laid ourselves out to
obey his directions that day, but with no success to speak of.
But the next was one of those glorious February days when every
twig is holding itself stiffly in the pride of coming leafage, and the
snowdrops in the garden beds lift dainty heads out of the brown
earth. The joy of the spring did it. We found her in the breakfast-
room, snowdrops at her throat, rosy, beaming, joyous; a greeting,
sweet and tender, for each, and never had we known her talk so
sparkling, her air so full of dainty freshness. There was no relapse
after this sudden cure. Our good friend Dr. Evans called again, to
find her in such flourishing health that ten minutes’ raillery of “my
poor patient” was the only attention he thought necessary. But, “H’m!
Mighty sudden cure!” as he was going out, showed that he too found
something odd in this sudden change.
In a day or two we had forgotten all about our bad week. All went
well for awhile. At the end of five weeks, however, we were again
pulled up—another attack of sudden indisposition, so outsiders
thought. What did I think? Well, my thoughts were not enviable.
“Father, I wish you would call at Walker’s and choose me some
flowers for this evening.” It was the evening of the Brisbanes’ dance,
and I had half an idea that Arthur Brisbane had made some
impression on Dorothy. His state of mind was evident enough. But,
without thinking twice, I interrupted with—
“Don’t you think what we have in the ‘house’ will do, dear? What
could make up better than stephanotis and maidenhair?”
Dorothy made no answer, and her father, thinking all was right,
went off at once; he was already rather late. We thought no more of
the matter for a minute or two, when, at the same moment, Elsie and
I found our eyes fixed upon Dorothy. The former symptoms followed
—days of pallor and indisposition, which were, at the same time,
days of estrangement from us all. Again we had in Dr. Evans, “just to
look at her,” and this time I noticed—not without a foolish mother’s
resentment—that his greeting was other than cordial, “Well, young
lady, and what’s gone amiss this time?” he said, knitting his bushy
brows, and gazing steadily at her out of the eyes which could be
keen as well as kind. Dorothy flushed and fidgeted under his gaze,
but gave only the cold unsatisfactory replies we had been favoured
with. The prescription was as before; but again the recovery was
sudden, and without apparent cause.
Part III
To make a long story short, this sort of thing went on, at longer or
shorter intervals, through all that winter and summer and winter
again. My husband, in the simplicity of his nature, could see nothing
but—
“The child is out of sorts; we must take her abroad for a month or
two; she wants change of air and scene.”
The children were quicker-eyed; children are always quick to
resent unevenness of temper in those about them. A single angry
outbreak, harsh word, and you may lay yourself out to please them
for months before they will believe in you again. Georgie was the first
to let the cat out of the bag.
“Dorothy is in a sulky fit again, mother; I wish she wouldn’t!”
Elsie, who has her father’s quick temper, was in the room.
“You naughty ungrateful little boy, you! How can you say such a
thing of Dorothy? Didn’t she sit all yesterday morning making sails
for your boat?”
Georgie, a little mollified, “Yes, but why need she be sulky to-day?
We all loved her yesterday, and I’m sure I want to to-day!”
Now that the mask was fallen and even the children could see
what was amiss, I felt that the task before me must not be put off. I
had had great misgivings since the first exhibition of Dorothy’s sullen
temper; now I saw what must be done, and braced myself for a
heavy task. But I could not act alone; I must take my husband into
my confidence, and that was the worst of it.
“George, how do you account for Dorothy’s fits of wretchedness?”
“Why, my dear, haven’t I told you? The child is out of sorts, and
must have change. We’ll have a little trip up the Rhine, and perhaps
into Switzerland, so soon as the weather is fit. It will be worth
something to see her face light up at some things I mean to show
her!”
“I doubt if there is anything the matter with her health; remember
how perfectly well and happy she is between these fits of
depression.”
“What is it, then? You don’t think she’s in love, do you?”
“Not a bit of it; her heart is untouched, and her dearest loves are
home loves.”
My husband blew his nose, with a “Bless the little girl! I could find
it in my heart to wish it might always be so with her. But what is your
notion? I can see you have got to the bottom of the little mystery.
Trust you women for seeing through a stone wall.”
“Each attack of what we have called ‘poorliness’ has been a fit of
sullenness, lasting sometimes for days, sometimes for more than a
week, and passing off as suddenly as it came.”
My dear husband’s face clouded with serious displeasure; never
before had it worn such an expression for me. I had a sense of
separation from him, as if we two, who had so long been one, were
two once more.
“This is an extraordinary charge for a mother to bring against her
child. How have you come to this conclusion?”
Already was my husband become my judge. He did not see that I
was ill, agitated, still standing, and hardly able to keep my feet. And
there was worse to come: how was I to go through with it?
“What causes for resentment can Dorothy conceivably have?” he
repeated, in the same cold judicial tone.
“It is possible to feel resentment, it is possible to nurse
resentment, to let it hang as a heavy cloud-curtain between you and
all you love the best, without any adequate cause, without any cause
that you can see yourself when the fit is over!”
My voice sounded strange and distant in my own ears: I held by
the back of a chair to steady myself: but I was not fainting: I was
acutely alive to all that was passing in my husband’s mind. He
looked at me curiously, inquisitively, but not as if I belonged to him,
and were part and parcel of his life.
“You seem to be curiously familiar with a state of feeling which I
should have judged to be the last a Christian lady would know
anything about.”
“Oh, my husband, don’t you see? You are killing me. I am not
going through this anguish for nothing. I do know what it is. And if

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Project Planning, Scheduling and

Control: The Ultimate Hands-On Guide

Jim Lewis’s new book Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control is a

Jim Lewis has written a detailed how-to book on managing projects—

There are thousands of project management books out there, but if

Good project management is difficult. Lewis fills in the practical gaps

eBook conversion by codeMantra

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lewis, James P., author.

Hazel Inez McDaniel (1919–1999)

And with gratitude to Frances Ann Scherl

CHAPTER 2 The Project Management Institute and the

CHAPTER 3 The Role of the Project Manager ...........................................63

CHAPTER 4 How to Achieve High-Performance

CHAPTER 5 Whole-Brain® Project Management ......101 SECTION TWO

CHAPTER 8 Implementation Planning ...................................................... 205

CHAPTER 10 Managing Project Communications ................................ 279

CHAPTER 11 Managing Risks ..................................... 293 SECTION FOUR

EXECUTION AND CONTROL

CHAPTER 13 Conducting Project Reviews ................ 363 SECTION FIVE

OTHER ISSUES IN PROJECT

CHAPTER 15 The Leadership Imperative .................................................. 391

CHAPTER 16 The Digital Project Office ...................................................... 399

CHAPTER 17 Using Stagegate ® to Select, Evaluate,

CHAPTER 18 Dealing with Stakeholders .......................................................411

CHAPTER 19 Applying Alan Mulally’s Principles

CHAPTER 20 Complexities and Pitfalls in International Projects ... 427

CHAPTER 21 Remote Teams .......................................................................... 435

APPENDIX Schedule Computations ..........................................................441

Glossary ..................................................................................... 465

You Are Already There

S ometime in 1991 a student in one of my project man-

I’ve dedicated this edition to the memory of my parents.

Fairview, North Carolina (near Asheville)

I became a project manager (PM) in 1966. I never chose to be

Projects have been going on for thousands of years of recorded

PUMP Certification Erupts

Soon the PUMP certification developed into a huge success.

The World Today

The Project Management Institute is the professional association

cost system to assess manufacturing efficiency, and scheduling

WHAT IS PROJECT MANAGEMENT?

The PMBOK ® GUIDE defines project management as “appli-

In December 1999, I had a meeting with a project manager in

Method®, and compared it to his process. We found that his

TOOLS, PEOPLE, AND SYSTEMS

Project management is not just scheduling.

Figure 1.1 Project Management Is Tools, People, and Systems

Organizations and project teams are people. I think we forget

THE FOUR PROJECT CONSTRAINTS

It has been common to talk about the triple constraints in project

Many people are confused by the term performance, so I want

P = performance requirements, technical and functional

Elsewhere, I have said that project management is the appli-

One way to think of the relationship that exists between the

Figure 1.2 Triangles Showing the PCTS Relationship

What is important about this illustration is that I cannot

THE TIME-COST TRADE-OFF

In today’s “hurry-up” world, the heat is on to finish projects in

To the left of the minimum cost point, we are trying to reduce

Figure 1.4 The Rework Spiral

If You Always Do What You’ve Always Done

the process. In fact, that is what formal proj- Insanity is con-