CHAPTER 1Welcome to the Project Management Jungle

IT IS 1:15 A.M., a Tuesday night like any other. A lone light burns inside a beautiful Tudor-style custom home on the edge of the Northwest Hills in Austin, Texas. Inside, yet another busy project manager struggles to complete his work for the day, entangled within the project management jungle. In this unrelenting, always-on, pressure-cooker environment, he juggles hundreds of e-mails per day, endless meetings that accomplish little, stakeholders with impossible expectations, and new problems that should have been foreseen before they consumed additional money, resources, and attention.

His two remaining tasks for the night are to finish up preparations for his monthly ops review with management, ...

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