1st Edition

Situational Project Management The Dynamics of Success and Failure

By Oliver F. Lehmann Copyright 2016
    298 Pages 19 Color & 72 B/W Illustrations
    by Auerbach Publications

    298 Pages 19 Color & 72 B/W Illustrations
    by Auerbach Publications

    Most project managers would agree that every project is unique. But not all project managers would agree that the best way to manage a unique project is unique. Many still cling to the old practice of having a methodology that is applied to all projects. "One size fits all" is still in common use, and this approach has proven to lead to project failure. Flexibility, situational intelligence, and creativity are essential to deliver project success.

    The need to recognize and master ever-changing requirements and environmental conditions is a tough challenge for professional project managers. The same practices that led to success yesterday may cause failure today. Selecting favorable responses to a given situation is often the most critical factor of the dynamics of success and failure. This book is designed to help project professionals assess a situation, predict the appropriate approach, methodology and achieving styles, and then apply them in a situational fashion.

    To guide project managers in selecting the appropriate responses, Situational Project Management (SitPM) shows how to assess a given project, determine its unique characteristics, and select the appropriate methods to complete the project. With this book, projects managers can use SitPM to develop profiles of their projects on the basis of the projects’ physical characteristics, the project teams’ behavioral characteristics, the enterprise environment, and the market environments receiving project deliverables. These profiles help project managers to determine the appropriate project life cycle approach and leadership style. The book also explores various ways to engage stakeholders on the basis of a project’s SitPM profile.

    The book’s author, Oliver F. Lehmann, has developed a set of templates to apply SitPM in practice. It can be downloaded from www.oliverlehmann.com/SitPM/Templates.zip.

    The Situational View on Project Management
    Introductory Questions
    The Purpose of This Book
    A Primer on Project Management
    Project Management Today
    How We Are Seen by Others
    The Complex Dynamics of Success and Failure
    Standardization and Certification in Project Management
    Terminology Traps
    Navigating between Monsters

    Digging Deeper
    Introductory Questions
    A Major Distinction
    What Is the Matrix?
    The Economics of Attention
    How Project Managers Learn
    Game Theory for Project Managers—A Brief Introduction

    A Typology of Projects
    Introductory Questions
    Best Practice Approaches vs. SitPM
    A Research Project
    Mark 1 Projects and Mark n Projects
    Greenfield Projects and Brownfield Projects
    Siloed Projects and Solid Projects
    Blurred Projects and Focused Projects
    High-Impact Projects and Low-Impact Projects
    Customer Projects and Internal Projects
    Stand-Alone Projects and Satellite Projects
    Predictable Projects and Exploratory Projects
    Composed Projects and Decomposed Projects
    Further Types of Projects

    Practices for SitPM
    Introductory Questions
    Lifecycle Approaches
    Agile Approaches
    Waterfall Approaches
    Rolling Wave Approaches
    Connective Leadership and Achieving Styles
    Management
    Favorable and Detrimental Practices

    Some Basic Tools for SitPM
    Introductory Questions
    Stakeholder Force-Field Analysis (StaFFA)
    Benefit Engineering
    Pressure-Free Estimating
    Protective Change Request Management Process
    Registers
    Meetings
    Scrum
    PDM Network Diagramming
    Situational Project Scheduling
    Staged Response Diagram (SRD)
    The Stakeholder Attitudes Influence Chart
    Turturism, Private Settings and Leadership

    Leadership and the Dynamics of Success and Failure
    So, What Is Leadership?
    As Project Leaders, What Should We Do?

    Appendices

    Glossary

    References

    Biography

    Oliver F. Lehmann was born in 1957 in Stuttgart, Germany. He has studied Linguistics, Literature, and History at the University of Stuttgart and Project Management at the University of Liverpool, UK, where he holds a Master of Science Degree. He had practiced project management for more than 12 years, mostly for the automotive industry and related trades, when he decided to make a change and become a trainer, speaker, and author in 1995. Among his customers are international companies such as Airbus, DB Schenker Logistics, Microsoft, Olympus, and Deutsche Telekom, and he has had assignments as a trainer in Asia, Europe, and the United States. He works for several training providers and is also a Visiting Lecturer at the Technical University of Munich. Oliver Lehmann is frequently invited to speak at congresses and other events, where he motivates his audience to open up to the incredible diversity found in project management around the world, and to the new experiences that await discovery by project managers. Among Oliver’s diverse certifications is the PMP® certification from the Project Management Institute (PMI).

    "A significant contribution to the project management body of knowledge." –Robert K. Wysocki, PhD, President, EII Publications, LLC