Project management plays a key role in how organisations go about developing new products, procedures, reward systems and businesses. In Creating an Environment for Successful Projects: The Quest to Manage Project Management, Robert Graham and Randall Englund argue that the key to successful product innovation and development is developing a thoroughly integrated ‘project-based’ organisation.
This ambitious goal entails no small amount of work. As the book’s title suggests, creating an environment for successful projects requires substantial change at every level of an organisation. This ranges from developing project management information systems and support mechanisms for project management teams, to securing upper management buy-in and engendering a culture around nurturing project management initiatives. The book reveals a number of useful insights on this last point, and basically demonstrates how management can create an environment that is conducive to project success.
The authors expand upon the concepts presented in their original 1997 work to include a number of insights on what works in the practice of project management, with a good number of case studies from organisations such as Hewlett-Packard, AT&T, General Electric and United Airlines. While these case studies are useful, there is no one approach to successful project management.
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