Chapter One. Meet Project Management

All white-collar work is project work.

Tom Peters

So you’ve been asked to manage a project. If you’re new to project management, your first question is probably "What’s a project?" no doubt followed closely by "How do I manage one?" and finally "How will I know if I did it right?" In this chapter, you’ll learn what a project is, the basics of managing one, and why project management is so important.

What Is a Project?

The good news is that you’ve probably already managed a project without realizing it. You stumble across them every day—at work and at home. Besides the projects you work on at the office, some of the honey-dos taped to the refrigerator door at home are probably projects. Here are some examples ...

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