The One-Page Project Manager for IT Projects: Communicate and Manage Any Project With A Single Sheet of Paper

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Projects are, most of all, people dependent. A book about projects is certainly not dissimilar. And indeed, many people contributed in various ways to this book.

In over 80 years at the O. C. Tanner Company, the disciplines of project management emerged at various times, places, and under the leadership of Obert C. Tanner, Carolyn T. Irish, and O. Don Ostler. The genesis of the One-Page Project Manager (OPPM) was the coming together of three requests by CEO Kent Murdock. First, for all leaders to secure formal project management training; second, to codify a set of company specific project management methods; and third, to provide him with a simple, but not too simple, communication tool for projects large and small.

The initial OPPMs were designed by a team tasked to build a $10 million automated storage and retrieval facility. Wayne Carlston, Klaus Goeller, David Petersen, Dennis Smith, and I provided the basic ideas, which Byron Terry brought to life in Microsoft Excel. Once the form was designed and populated with data mined from the Primavera and the various Microsoft Project plans, David Petersen collaborated with all the stake-holders, filled in and aligned our progress, and prepared the very first periodic OPPM reports to management.

Could the OPPM be helpful in Information Technology (IT) projects specifically? Our original project (about which The One-Page Project Manager, was written) contained a modest $3 million IT component. This early indication that ...