ProManIS presents the BEST way to manage your next IS Project ...

"How to keep your project on time and on budget"

FINALLY: A simple, practical guide to managing your IT projects, based on experience, not theory!

The Essential eBook Guide to:

Practical Project Management

The Fastest Way to Learn IT Project Management

You've managed projects before. You've probably installed systems and software, managed small teams and contractors up to a dozen or so people and with some last minute stress you got it all done.

The problem is that your next project is bigger and it's absolutely critical that it's run properly. The company depends on it being done right. Your job depends on it being done right. You know the timing is tight and you think your people are up to the task. Maybe you'll get it done within the budget. But maybe you wont. There's a dozen other things you're juggling at the same time. Can you really afford the time it'll take to do this new project? Maybe you've even made enquiries about getting an outside company in to do the work, or a consultant Project Manager or you've considered doing a course in project management? Maybe you've looked at a few books about project management on Amazon or at your local bookstore and even bought one or two. The answer is always the same though: it takes too long to learn, is too expensive to outsource and you're running out of time. What will you do?

Rest assured many IS Managers end up facing this dilemma as their company grows. What's more is you'd like to manage the project yourself and do it well - it'll look great on your resume. It'd improve your chances for promotion or building up to bigger projects you haven't dared to tackle yet. Maybe you own the company and getting a project right is the difference between profitability or going bust. If you haven't gone out and done a specialise course in Project Management (in which case you'd be the highly paid consultant) then you really need help.

You've read some books and after all, you're not stupid or you wouldn't have the job you have. You know some people you can talk to. You can go out and get that Microsoft Project software and that'll do the hard work for you. Won't it?

The problem is what you think should be a fairly simple process looks very hard when you start reading books or trying to use the software.

Maybe you already know that MS Project doesn't manage a project for you.

And when you looked at books on the subject they talk about PMBoK, PRINCE2 and Risks and Work Breakdown Structures and Time Phase Budgeting and you realise consultants get paid a lot for a good reason and that project management isn't so easy after all.

In fact, surveys have shown that more than 50% of IS projects run over budget and over schedule and that some 27% never get finished (Standish Group, 2006) . So if they get it wrong, what chance have you got when you're just getting into project management? Can you imagine if 27% of all houses or cars being built were abandoned before they were finished?

Now there's another option. Having been managing IS projects for years, finally a practical, 'hands on' book has been written that you can read in a few hours and will save you days and even weeks of your own time as well as telling you how to make sure your next project is profitable, on time and your client is happy. In fact it'll probably save your project days, weeks or even months and thousands of dollars (based on feedback from previous readers) - it may even save your job. How much is that worth?

This book, Practical Project Management, is the distilled essence of managing Information Systems projects (that's anything to do with writing software, upgrading computers or networks, eCommerce, web sites, telecoms and much more) written by an expert with 25+ years of experience in companies ranging from small boutique agencies with a handful of consultants up to some of the largest companies in the world.

This book from ProManIS starts from what you know: that upgrading a computer system or writing software isn't like building a house or a new factory. Computer engineers and programmers are a breed all of their own.

ProManIS isolates the key factors that must be addressed when you manage an IS project, right from the beginning. The chapters in this book contain the nuggets of gold garnered from MBAs and specialist qualifications in IT over two decades in fields from Finance to Communications to eCommerce to highly specialised military system. It's like having an experienced project management specialist looking over your shoulder every step of the way, mentoring you, offering advice and reminders from all their years of experience, every step of the way.

This guide wont drag you down with tomes of reading and theory. It's not written with only one project management method in mind or just book theory or to sell you something else. This is succinct, practical advice, learnt on the job by people just like you. You'll learn quickly what you need and what you don't need to do - and what can go wrong and what pitfalls to avoid. You get asked to consider factors that will save your job again and again. Just ask some of our satisfied customers to date like David Graham, an IS Project Manager at one of the largest defense company in the world:

"This book saved my project. I've managed projects before but there were key points that I'd overlooked. I'd been trained the 'company way' but was lucky in the past. This time I had just read Practical Project Management and it reminded me to check some items neither I nor the customer had thought about. This saved us over $200,000 of rework over 6 months. Buying and reading this book is the best few hours investment I've ever made."

Or how about this from Mike Darrin, a manager of a small media company based in Burbank, California:

"I'd always stumbled through managing projects and we'd been ok but I knew any big contracts would be too stressful and complex so we never bid for them. After reading Practical Project Management I won a job that would have broken the company before - but this time I applied the lessons, asked the right questions and we sailed through. Sure there were bumps - what project doesn't have it's problems? But by following the advice in this book we made more profit on that job than we'd ever made before and now the company is stepping up to even bigger projects."

If you're like most IT managers, you can't afford the time off for training, and you can't afford to outsource project management.

So what does the book actually talk about? Look at these chapter and subsection headings:

1. OVERVIEW OF A PROJECT
   The Background to IT Project Management
   The PM Process in Brief
   A Word about Software and Tools
2. SCOPE, SPECIFICATION AND CONTRACT
   Initiation and Analysis
   Scoping and Functional Specification
   Functional Spec and Requirements Capture – Do I Need It?
   Who’s Paying for all this Work? The Contract
3. THE PROJECT PLAN
   Project Scope Inclusions and Exclusions
   Work Breakdown Structure
   Schedule
   Cost Breakdown Structure
   Resource Schedule
   Governance
   Standards Compliance
   Risks and Issues
   Testing and Acceptance
   Other Documentation
4. WORK BREAKDOWN STRUCTURE
   Two Ways to Go
   Layout, Numbering and Software
   Top Level
   Second Level
   Things to Include
   Example WBS
5. SCHEDULE
   Initial Steps
   Parallel Tasks
   The Critical Path
   Float is Good
   Holidays and Sick Leave
   Monte Carlo Analysis
6. RESOURCES
   Who’s Doing What
   Contractors
   Part Time People
   Hours in a Day
   Levels of Expertise
   Resource Levelling
   Client’s People and Roadblocks
   Computers and Hardware
   Buildings and Location
   Software, Licenses
7. RISKS AND ISSUES
   Risks
   Issues
   The Register
   Constant Updates
8. BUDGET
   Time Phase, Earned Value or Milestone Payments
   Travel, Materials, Overheads
   Equipment
   Fixed Price or Time and Materials
   Quotes
   Keeping Track and Reporting
   A Word About Profits
9. TRACKING AND EXECUTION
   Design
   Meetings
   Reporting
   Tracking Issues and Risks
   Tracking the Budget
   Tracking the Schedule
   Changes and Deviations
10. THE FORGOTTEN TASKS
    Testing
    Integration
    Documentation
    Training
    Project Acceptance
    Maintenance
    Systems Configuration
    Data Migration
11. ACCEPTANCE AND CLOSING
    Lessons Learnt – Yours and Theirs
    Final Signoff – Are We All Happy?
    Follow On and Leftovers – Dragging it Out
    Keep It, File It, Take It - Documentation
12. COMMON PROBLEMS
    Estimating Time
    Estimating Software Development Time
    Resource Availability and Critical People
    Changing Scope
    Insufficient Scope Detail
    Lack of End User Understanding
    Lack of Rigour in Task Breakdown
    Insufficient Reviews
    Budgets, Taxes
    Legal Issues
    OH&S, SHE, Security
    Governance – Engineering, Accreditation & QA
    Governance - Financial – Corporate & Federal
    Access, Downtime, Weekends and Late Nights
    Two Systems at Once
    Intellectual Property
    UI Design and Human Factors
    Training: Users, Maintainers, Support
    Spares, Product Life
    Corporate Buying Guidelines – Commonality of Brands
    Licensing: HW, SW, How Long, Who Owns it First?
    

In fact, just reading the above list probably reminded you of a few things you may have overlooked in your last project or that you're worried about for you current project.

All this is for only $3.79!! You'll probably save thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars on your very next project. Better still, you'll save your job and possibly even the company with it. Your boss will appreciate your skills in project management and your resume will look better. This is a winner all round!  

Simply reading this ebook will teach you the basics of getting started in project management. In a few hours you'll have all the key elements that courses teach for hundreds of dollars or are found in far more expensive books. Don't waste time - just learn the simple steps to successful project management.

Ok - so you're interested in buying Practical Project Management? Sign up right now for a copy of the complete electronic version and you can download it immediately: