Naked Project Management, The Bare Facts
by Dennis Lock, 2013
Introduction
Project management depends largely on common sense and a logical, systematic approach. But it is necessary also to acquire some special skills to organize, schedule and control a project so that it produces the result that everyone wants. Author Dennis Lock presents Naked Project Management as an introductory guide to the world of project management. It is for students and managers who need to understand how small projects should be managed but who, nonetheless, do not necessarily intend to become permanent project managers themselves.
In this little book, Dennis has stripped project management down to its bare facts - simplifying everything but trivializing nothing. He explains and illustrates the essential project management skills in pragmatic and jargon-free terms. Everything is carefully laid out and supported with clear diagrams. It covers all the essential aspects of project management using astonishingly few words. Further, an entertaining case study project flows logically through the chapters from beginning to end so that the book covers all the vital topics.
In an Email exchange, Dennis asked us to bear in mind that Naked Project Management has been cut to the bone compared to his much larger book Project Management (10th edition).[1] So this little book is intended to give only a cursory view of its subject, although of course it has to be factually correct. Nevertheless, there is sound practical advice here on how to organize and manage a small or medium sized project for anyone involved in, or contemplating, such an initiative.
The entertaining case study project just mentioned is called "The Swings and Roundabouts project". About this project, Dennis also told us that:
"I live in the cathedral city of St Albans in Hertfordshire, and adjacent to our cathedral is a large public park with a beautiful lake and wildlife. It's called Verulamium, which was the name of the Roman City that existed here nearly 2000 years ago. There one finds a typical children's playground (complete with swings and roundabouts), so I chose that as my simple model. I decided to take some photos before I began writing. However, as an old man dressed in a dirty raincoat I had to be very careful - people tend to look down their noses at men in dirty raincoats who take pictures of other people's children and are apt to call the police. So I was most careful to go there early one morning, when the park was deserted. The first mother and child arrived just as I left."
St. Albans, UK, is not far from where we were brought up, so we read the case study in the little book rather like a detective novel - anxious to find out how it all turned out in the end.
About the author
Dennis is an industry guru who has been writing on the subject for 45 years. He is a freelance writer specializing in project management. He has held a progression of successful management positions in a variety of industries. He has also filled consultancy assignments in Britain and overseas and more recently has taught project management to master's degree students as an external lecturer at two British universities. He has written or edited over 50 management books mostly on project management.
In an Email exchange,[2] he says he wrote this book in three weeks, and his aim was to save the time and money of students who are only studying project management peripherally. Therefore, degree and other students, for whom project management is an elective or small part of their course, should love this compact timesaving and reasonably priced study resource. Others will likely find it rather light reading and should invest in Project Management (10th edition) that we reviewed previously.
1. See the first review in this set.
2. By Email from Dennis Lock, March 8, 2013.
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Book 1 - Project
Management, Tenth Edition
