Book Structure
Jolyon's book is not really divided into chapters, but five major sections as follows:
- Introduction
- Understanding the Project
- Defining the Project
- Planning the Project, and
- Running the Project
Each of these sections is divided into subsections ranging in number from five to eighteen. Of course, these main section headings do not really tell the story of the book's contents, and the subsection titles are too numerous to list here. The subsection headings in fact represent the project activities that Jolyon would expect to find under each heading in the chronological sequence of a full project life span. As you might expect, the two largest main sections are Planning and Running the Project. Nevertheless, to give a taste of the book's contents, here is just a small sampling of the fifty-four subsection titles.
Under Planning the Project:
- Defining and Managing Risk
- Project Assumptions and Constraints
- Planning for Quality
- Planning for Implementation and
- Planning for Completion
Under Running the Project:
- Building the Team
- Tracking Progress
- Controlling Action Items
- Solving Overrun Problems
- Managing Client Expectations
The text is illustrated with forty-nine Exhibits that are either tables or graphics. The book is also laced with sidebars providing "What If?" scenarios and suggested remedial "Actions". There are some seventy-five such examples supporting the text throughout the book.
For those that already have the first edition of this book, we counted fourteen new or significantly expanded subsections. For example, the Introduction section now includes "The Role of the Project Management Office" (assuming the organization has one - and is large enough to justify one.) Under Defining the Project, and after the subsection "Defining the Deliverables" is a new one titled "Defining the Project Objectives". (Actually, we think that logically this should have come first.)
Planning for Implementation, and Planning for Completion, are both new subsections under Planning the Project, and Closing the Project is new under Running the Project. These last two are important for reasons we'll disclose later.
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Introduction
