Author’s
Note
There is a silent revolution happening in the
field of project management education - up to
now all the project management courses have been
loosely structured around the PMBOK. But now
SAQA have introduced a number of unit standards
which have given project management its first
academic foot hold.
Project Management Techniques – college
edition, has been written as a project management
tools and techniques book which focuses on the
tools and techniques used by the PMBOK, the APM
bok, the competency standards, the unit standards
and the planning software.
These standards are
ideal for students who may be involved in technical
projects, business projects
or developmental projects which cut across
a range of economic sectors. These standards
will
also add value to learners who are running
their own business and recognise that project
management
forms an integral component of their business.
The project management software has revolutionized
how information is processed, communicated
and stored. Common data bases have integrated
departmental
information, and the software has greatly
increased the planning and control processing
power.
This book will explain with theory and examples
how
the software calculates and crunches the
numbers. The limiting element with project management
computing is not the software or hardware,
but how the tools and techniques are applied. As the
use of projects becomes more pervasive, so
more managers are entering the field of project
management. Their success will be helped by
their
ability to develop and apply a comprehensive
toolkit of planning and control techniques
- as a mechanic works with a bag of tools, so
the
project manager works with a computer producing
organisation charts, work breakdown structures,
Gantt charts, resource histograms and cashflow
statements.
This book is structured inline with
the PMBOK’s
nine knowledge areas, the APM bok, the Australian
competency standards, and the South African
unit standards for project management (numbers
120373,
120375, 120383, 120374, 120377, 120379). The
text also explains the planning and control
techniques used by the project management software.
These
standards form the corner stones of project
management and will help you ringfence what you
need to
know. An Instructor’s Manual is available
for lecturers.
After completing another around
the world lecturing tour of universities, I
was asked to put back
some of the project management techniques I
had taken out in a previous edition. So I am
pleased
to say worked examples for PERT, line of balance
and crashing are back in the text. Rory Burke
Cape Town
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