International Journal of Project Management 20 (2002) 179±182
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Book reviews
Project Management of Multiple Projects and Contracts Chapter Four covers the whole range from the capital
Edited by J. Loftus, Thomas Telford, 1999, £35.00 expenditure management to the cost control of a single
ISBN: 0-7277-2710-9, 194 p. project. It does so in broad overview which is useful in
thinking about allocating responsibility for budget
This book deals with the management challenges management.
faced by a company or organisation which needs to Chapter Five is a description of what would be com-
carry out a range of projects to support and maintain its monly understood as good project management practice
ongoing business or operation. This book therefore only when running a single project from design to takeover,
covers a very speci®c subset of the area that might be with due emphasis on passing the project on to the
¯agged under the title `Project management of multiple operators of the ®nal project. The last part of the chap-
projects and contracts'. ter places emphasis on time management. Again, exam-
The book can be recommended to people in the ples of documentation are provided.
manufacturing sector who are new to project manage- Chapter Six is a brief chapter which deals with the
ment. However, they may ®nd it dicult to persist with accounting treatment of `cost of work done' in the cli-
the reading. The text largely consists of facts, opinions ent's book keeping.
and recommendations which does not leave much room Chapter Seven solidly discusses the issue of how an
for the reader to engage with the text. organisation sets itself up to carry out a number of
Another group of readers might be those charged projects at the same time. It deals with the common
with setting up project control and management sys- responses to this problem and interestingly presents two
tems. The facts, opinions, recommendations, and sam- case studies on how two organisations have attempted
ple documentation provide useful reminders and to deal with the issues involved. This chapter is quite
checklists, both explicitly and implicitly. dierent in tone from the rest of the book; here one is
Before making further overall comments I will now invited into a discussion which is a more engaging
turn to the book, its eight chapters, in more detail: experience for the reader.
Chapter One sets up the framework within which the Chapter Eight makes a range of points about a num-
book is written, i.e. that of a manufacturer managing an ber of issues, e.g. safety, quality, planning, o-site and
ongoing capital budget to support an ongoing process on-site work, project culture, services, contracting
or business. This chapter describes the function of the strategy, etc. The point about providing adequate sta
department charged with managing the ongoing capital for the management of interfaces is well made.
budget. It provides a useful description of an actual My further general comments are:
department charged with this responsibility. This is a short book covering a wide range and there-
Chapter Two describes the process of gaining fore has the obvious problem of lack of depth on any
approval for capital expenditure. It presents a sequence one point. However it does cover much of the territory
for obtaining approval for capital expenditure and con- and is therefore useful. Parts of the text clearly deal with
tains useful examples of documentation and indirectly issues associated with multiple projects, e.g. the chapter
provides a check list. on capital expenditure proposals and the chapter on
The title of Chapter Three, `Commercial manage- department organisation, but parts of the text fall back
ment', led me to expect a discussion on markets, sales, on the detailing of how to manage a single project, e.g.
likely revenues etc. but instead found that `commercial the chapter on project management. This vacillation
management' is seen essentially as entering into the between dealing with multiple projects and dealing with
contract. I therefore take it that this term has varying the management of individual projects weakens the
meanings from place to place. The chapter brie¯y dis- book. It ends up being neither properly one nor the
cusses, among other things, accounting, risk, economic other; the issue of the management of multiple projects
conditions, administrative requirements, sub-contract- itself deserves its own book.
ing, and procurement strategy. Again, a useful checklist Constraining and disciplining things so that `proper'
is both explicitly and implicitly present in the chapter. and `authoritative' control is maintained seems to be the
0263-7863/01/$20.00 # 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S0263-7863(00)00047-8
180 Book reviews / International Journal of Project Management 20 (2002) 179±182
objective. Doing the job as advocated by this text relies ences, which is a pity. I am pleased to have read the
on somebody having sucient power to impose the book and would recommend it to the two targets groups
methods and proper procedures. The text does not discuss I have mentioned.
this issue. What the book is doing is describing a way of
doing things without discussing whether or not the meth- Patrick Healy
ods should be applied and without a discussion on how University of Technology, Sydney
one gets sucient support to implement the methods. PO Box 123
The text is well presented, well laid out with good Broadway NSW 2007
diagrams. It lacks an index and contains very few refer- Australia
PII: S0263-7863(00)00047-8
Managing Unique Assignments project team. Chapter ®ve concentrates on environ-
Gert Wijnen and Rudy Kur, Gower Publishing, 2000, mental factors for success while chapter six reviews
ISBN 0-566-08279-9. fundamentals of team development, con¯ict manage-
ment and roles and responsibilities. The ®nal chapter
This is a wide ranging book where Wijnen and Kur covers methods to develop sta competencies to enable
have distilled their many years of consulting experience the sta to better handle unique assignments. Taken as
in project and programme management. It is written a whole the chapter oer a total system that could help
mainly for experienced project managers and for upper to improve project management in any organisation.
managers who must construct and direct organisational It is clear that the authors are quite knowledgeable as
processes. The authors state that ``Managing Unique they share a wealth of experience. It also seems that this
Assignments is primarily intended for everyone who has book was not rushed to publication as it is well struc-
to deal with unique assignments on a regular basis tured with cogent arguments. The charts and illustra-
because of his position as ±potential± manager, leader tions are excellent and the appendix is full of checklists
or supervisor. . .'' Since the book is a result of project that can be used on the job. At times the authors do get
experience in organisations it contains many andicdotes a bit wordy as they describe their ideas with rather
regarding typical organizational perversities that sur- lengthy arguments. Reading the full text can become
round resource allocation. The experienced manager tedious at times. However, the authors seemed aware of
will ®nd the descriptions to be accurate re¯ections of that problem and oer a preÂcis in the margin of most
their reality. The student will feel much of it to be pages as a solution. I found that reading the preÂcis and
improbable ®ction. examining the illustrations allowed me to understand
In the ®rst three chapters the authors expand beyond the essentials of the book in short order. I would recom-
typical project management to programme approach mend this book to any manager concerned with increas-
and programme management. Chapter one gives the ing project success throughout their organisation.
basics of their project-based working approach, con-
sisting of phasing, managing and decision making, as
well as their programme approach of programming, Bob Graham
managing, and decision making. The details of these RJ Graham and Associates
approaches are given in chapters two and three. Chap- PO Box 2537
ter's four focuses on the interaction among the ``leading Mendocino, CA 95460
players'' of the principle, the project manager and the USA
PII: S0263-7863(01)00026-6
Project Management always a compendium of project management knowledge
Dennis Lock, Gower Publishing, Aldershot, UK and and necessary to my peace of mind as a practitioner!
Vermont, USA 2000, £25.00, ISBN-0566 08225, 640 pp. The seventh is larger, re-ordered and the number of
topics has been extended to meet modern project man-
The seventh edition of this book is a worthy successor to agement needs, and it covers much of the Association
all the rest. Each in its turn has ®gured on my bookshelf. for Project Managements (APM) Body of Knowledge.
Never books to read from cover to cover, nevertheless It seems to be more generic, within the boundary of
