Project Management

Project Management: A Financial Perspective is designed to provide you with a deep understanding of the applications and importance of Project Management. You will learn how to assess a project with respect to time, costs, and resources in order to effectively and efficiently reach your goals. You will become familiar with the five processes involved in Project management – Initiating, Planning, Executing, Controlling, and Closing on time and within budget– along with the nine knowledge areas – Project Integration, Project Scope, Project Time, Project Cost, Project Quality, Project Human Resources, Project Communications, Project Risk Management, and Project Procurement – that are essential to being an expert Project Manager. Individuals need hard knowledge and real skills to work successfully in a project environment and to accomplish project objectives. This book is intended to equip its users with both. How? By explaining concepts and techniques and by illustrating through numerous examples how they can be skillfully applied. This book is intended for students as well as for working professionals and volunteers. It is designed to outfit these people with the essential skills needed to make effective contributions and will have an immediate impact on the accomplishment of projects in which they are involved. This book for the most part follows the framework within the Project Management Institute’s Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). The material, however, places a financial focus on projects as a way to accomplish desired changes in the enterprise in a coordinated and predictable way for favorable outcomes. Topics covered include economic feasibility study, life-cycle costing, target costing, and earned value analysis. Through better project management, you can reduce or eliminate failed projects and reduce the costs associated with successful ones, resulting in increased enterprise effectiveness in providing the maximum value to shareholders.