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Question: Thanks for agreeing with us to chat about your book "The Principles of Project Management". Can you tell us a little bit about your experience in project management and how you got into this role?

Meri: I come from a technical background, but got into project management over the past 5-6 years. I first got a taste for it when the project manager for one of my technical projects moved to a new assignment and so I “inherited” the responsibilities. So I found myself managing a project with no formal training and no real clue of what I needed to be doing!

What I found was that I could do the work, but not manage the project. Luckily I was surrounded by good people who gave me a lot of coaching & mentoring. After that I invested a lot more in more formal PM training. That, combined with a lot more experience on projects large and small, led me to qualify as a PMP (Project Management Professional) a couple of years ago.

Question: Can you tell me a little bit about why you were interested in writing this title?

Meri: When I was learning about project management, there seemed to be two types of book: very formal “text book” titles, or much more advanced “how to go from good to great” books. The former were mainly long and quite boring. The latter tended to be much better, but not accessible to someone who had limited or no project management experience.

Essentially, I thought there needed to be a pragmatic book for people just starting out as project managers – the kind of folk who wanted to get useful quickly. A lot of people fall into project management roles and don’t have time to spend months in the classroom – they need to be able to do the job well from the very beginning.

Question: Your book is unusual compared to many titles, since it's only 208 pages so that it can be read and put to use quickly. Why did you end up writing a shorter book? What makes it different from the other titles out there?

Meri: Project management is not rocket science. Granted, being a fantastic project manager takes talent as well as plenty of experience. But I fundamentally believe that anyone can be a good project manager – they just need the right understanding at the right time and the will to put this into action.

So rather than adding to the existing tomes of project management knowledge, instead I focused on how to get someone with little or no experience or formal training to be a useful project manager in the shortest time possible. This book is very intent on giving the reader an understanding of how projects really happen and what the most important & useful tools are for the fledgling project manager.

Question: What is the biggest mistake you see project managers making again and again?

Meri: Not getting planning right. Many project managers either fail to plan completely (and then wonder why things don’t go according to plan – the plan that didn’t exist!) or spend a huge amount of time planning in minute detail. Very detailed plans are very time-consuming to maintain and soon become out-of-date, so people lose confidence in the plan. It’s also very hard to plan in lots of detail as a team, let alone track progress.

Involving the team in planning at an appropriate level of detail (just enough to know whether you’re on track, but no more) is one of the key skills every project manager needs to learn.

Question: If you could offer advice to someone in the IT Industry who finds themselves responsible for managing a project, what would it be?

Meri: Don’t forget that most projects, but in particular IT projects, succeed or fail when they are initiated and closed. If you don’t start right, but getting everyone crystal clear on what is expected, what will be delivered and when, then you will be chasing shadows for the rest of the project. Similarly, if you don’t finish the project rigorously, ensuring that all the loose ends are tied up, you’ll end up with “zombie stakeholders” who keep coming back with more and more requests months or even years after the project is finished and the team disbanded.

Of course the other bit of advice I’d give them is to read this book! ;-)