How to Run Successful High-Tech Project-Based Organizations [Hardcover]

Fergus O'Connell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1999 | Series: Artech House Computer Library

This volume offers practical steps to creating a Structured Project Management (SPM) system in your organization. Based on the ten steps in Fergus O'Connell's previous book, "How To Run Successful Projects", it expands on that concept to offer a solution to keeping today's high-tech companies competitive, on budget, and on schedule. Using SPM company-wide, you create a system wherein unforeseen challenges or problems occur on a localized level where they do not affect the system-wide enterprise. All project tasks are described as being both unique and part of a larger scheme, giving definition and a sense of importance to individuals, departments, divisions, and an entire company. From the individual on up, smaller projects are completed and compiled, layer upon layer, until your whole organization is producing at peak levels.

Editorial Reviews

From the Author

In 1992 I started a one-man training and consulting company - ETP, or "Eyes on the Prize." Happily the venture (project!) worked out, and today ETP is a thriving company whose offices in a number of locations around the globe have undertaken project management training or consulting assignments on six continents.

The project management we teach and consult in is less about PERT (program evaluation and review technique) charts and Gantt charts and more about behavior change. Everything we do has one aim in mind: to cause the mud to stick, as somebody once elegantly described it. To make people do the things we teach - not just to understand them or think they're neat but to do them and continue to do them, particularly when the environment within which they operate is constantly trying to tempt them to tray from the true path.

We have had some spectacular successes - people saying that we changed their lives. Almost without exception, we got tremendously positive feedback to the ideas we passed on. Deep down, however, we wondered: Too many people were going back to organizations where - for want of a better expression - the "system" overwhelmed them. Back in their organizations - for whatever reason - nothing much changed, and whatever good intentions they had when they left our training course evaporated, more or less quickly, once they got back in the trenches.

Sure, the people needed to change, but even more than the people, their organizations needed to change. That is what this book is about. It takes the tools of structured project management and turns them on organizations.

About the Author

Fergus O'Connell graduated with a First in Mathematical Physics from University College Cork. With 20 years in the computer industry, 17 spent in project management roles, Fergus O'Connell became a best-selling author with his book How to Run Successful Projects. Since founding his own management consulting company in 1992, he has taught thousands of managers in his unique seminars and worked with major corporations around the world.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 316 pages
• Publisher: Artech House (October 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580530109
• ISBN-13: 978-1580530101
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 7.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,023,204 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

The Sunday Business Post has described Fergus O'Connell as having 'more strings to his bow than a Stradivarius'.

His first novel, 'Call The Swallow', was described by The Irish Times as 'better than Schindler's Ark (itself a Booker Prize winner). 'Call The Swallow' was short listed for the 2002 Kerry Ingredients Irish Fiction Prize and nominated for the Hughes & Hughes / Sunday Independent Novel of the Year. His new novel, 'Starlight' has just been published.

Fergus is also the author of twelve business books. The first of these, 'How to Run Successful Projects - the Silver Bullet', has become both a bestseller and a classic and has been constantly in print for over twenty years. His book on common sense entitled 'Simply Brilliant' - also a bestseller and now in its fourth edition - was runner-up in the W H Smith Book Awards 2002. His books have been translated into twenty languages.

He is married, has two children and is returning to Ireland after eight years living in France.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Shows service companies how to attain world-class status, April 25, 2001

By 

Mike Tarrani "www.tarrani.com" (Deltona, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: How to Run Successful High-Tech Project-Based Organizations (Hardcover)

After working for various consulting companies I have discovered that the best have established processes that are based on project management and customer satisfaction, and the worst have no processes at all. This book provides a recipe from going from worst to best.

This is the second of Mr. O'Connell's books that I have read. The first was Running Successful Projects, in which he provides excellent advice on how to effectively and skillfully manage projects. In How to Run Successful High-Tech Project-Based Organizations he extends these practices to organizations, and does so by providing a step-by-step approach and a performance model that is the basis for company-wide processes.

He gives ten steps that every consulting or service company needs to incorporate, and does so in a clear and methodical manner. The steps themselves are easy, the barrier is leadership and management from the top. Unfortunately, Mr. O'Connell doesn't address how to get management on board, but that is outside of the scope of this book. My personal view is Mr. O'Connell advises and the wise will abide.

I thought that the two strongest chapters in this book were the organization-wide status report, which is sorely missing in too many companies, and the program for project-based organization. The organization-wide status report is the key to achieving teamwork because it communicates to the entire company and makes everyone a stakeholder in the company's success instead of relegating them to a cog in an impersonal machine. This, by the way, is one of the most basic tenets of good leadership, and the lack of leadership is why too many consulting companies are in chaos, have abysmal records for execution, and poor client satisfaction.

Part three of this book offers the real roadmap to success: treating your organization as a project. This is a unique approach and is really an excellent foundation for strategic and tactical planning. I saw how this aspect of Mr. O'Connell's approach provides the essence of a vision, mission statement and values.

This book, if read and taken to heart at the right level in a consulting company (or any other kind of company that delivers services), can make the difference between achieving world-class status and extinction. There would be less material for Dilbert cartoons if everyone read this book and applied the information.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You won't regret buying this one, January 31, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: How to Run Successful High-Tech Project-Based Organizations (Hardcover)

A very entertaining read. Wonderful writing style. Chapters tend to be short and begin with a short quiz. The author interjects humor into what is often a boring subject. The final portion of the chapters consist of templates for use in your own work.

Very useful from a practical point of view as well. The focus of this book is on the big picture ideas. The author lays out the important conceptual steps which are vital for success. The more technical details (such as using software) are well covered in other books and this one does not go into those in detail.

Some of the great take aways from this book include; estimating the probability of success of a project, practical strategies for saving projects gone awry, how to review proposed projects before the expensive work begins.

I am glad I bought this book.

3 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How to run successful high-tech project-based organizations, April 5, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: How to Run Successful High-Tech Project-Based Organizations (Hardcover)

Really it is a great book to read. All High-tech Project managers should read it. Easy to read, well organized, direct to the point approach, makes it an useful book.