Introduction
Author Dennis Lock is no stranger to these pages. In past years we have published reviews of several of his books including in particular: Project Management Tenth Edition[1]. We mention this book in particular because as Dennis says in his Preface:
"The first edition of this book resulted from a suggestion from Gower[2] that I might produce a précis of my larger work, Project Management. This recognized that not all students and practicing project managers needed the comprehensive coverage of the larger work.
I have always been aware of the need to keep this book of Essentials in step with its mother text and other project management development. So this fourth edition is the junior complement to the tenth edition of Project Management, which was published in 2013. It is intended for practising managers, and for students where project management is one module in their degree syllabus."
Further, Dennis concludes his Preface with these words:
"I am always grateful to serious reviewers and I am particular indebted this time to Max Wideman for reviewing two of my other recent books thoroughly and sympathetically. His comments on those works led me to make some corrections in this revised text."
Thank you Dennis for this public recognition, which is much appreciated.
But with such an accolade in public print, I must now be careful to avoid any suggestion of collegial back scratching, whether good or otherwise. So this time, contrary to usual practice, we'll skip the "What we liked" and "Downside" sections and simply make comment on a few items that we found of particular interest.
The target audience for this work is, of course, anyone who is interested or already involved in serious project management of whatever area of application. Even those whose primary interest is in pursuing an "Agile" approach, mainly in Information Technology projects, will find a lot to learn from the book's broad but lightly-handled coverage.
This book is well written in a clear style. The text is augmented with ample diagrams, figures and tables to ensure the reader's understanding and thus makes for easy reading. True that the text is a digest of a much larger work and might therefore be classified as "Introductory", nevertheless it provides sound basic advice across a whole range of project management art.
About the author
Dennis Lock is a freelance writer who specializes in project management. His wide industrial experience has included successful management positions in sub-miniature electronics, defence systems, heavy engineering and international mining. He has fulfilled consultancy assignments in Britain and over seas, and in more recent years has taught project management to masters degree students as an external lecturer at two British universities. Dennis is a Fellow of APM, Fellow of the Institute of Management Services and a Member of the Chartered Management Institute. He has written or edited over 60 management books, mostly for Gower Publishing Limited.
1. Lock, Dennis, Project Management Tenth Edition, Gower Publishing Ltd, Surrey, England, 2013; Naked Project Management, the Bare Facts, (ditto, 2013); and Handbook of People in Project Management, (ditto, 2013).
2. Gower is the publisher
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