Summary
Striving for agile, adaptive teams and organizations is a growing trend in management education, and for good reason. Modern organizations operate in an environment of intense competitive pressure and technological uncertainty. Speed and flexibility (while maintaining quality) are paramount, and yet elusive in most organizations."No Surprises Project Management" anticipated this trend and remains the best documented description of how pressure and uncertainty, when not addressed, combine to produce mediocre to poor performance. More importantly, "No Surprises Project Management" provides key principles and a system of practices for achieving excellent performance even in the most challenging "high stakes" environments. Nearly a decade after publication, the book is still praised for describing a manageable and replicable approach to helping teams and organizations succeed. The last 60 pages of the book contain detailed procedures and example templates. What separates "No Surprises Project Management" from other project management approaches is a relentless focus on results. Much of the support for project management is skill and criterion based. Project managers are certified for demonstrating knowledge on a written test. Organizations are assigned levels of performance management competence when they meet checklists of criteria. Unfortunately certification and criterion-based checklists are no substitute for reliably meeting or exceeding project goals. The subtitle of this book - "A Proven Early Warning System for Staying on Track" - describes exactly what is provided in it. Organizations who follow this approach know at all times if they are on track to meet project milestones and goals. Awareness of the earliest signs of getting off track is key to effective decision making and keeping projects on track to succeed. You simply cannot follow the methods in this book and get surprised with a poor project result. Try it and find out for yourself.
About the Author
Timm J. Esque is co-Founder and Partner of Ensemble Management Consulting. Timm helps complex project teams do what they say they are going to do, leading to faster delivery of higher quality products at lower cost. Many if not most technical projects at Intel Corporation (where Timm worked for 15 years) still begin with a project planning technique Timm helped develop called "Map Day". Timm has been in consulting practice since 1998. His work with project teams has been featured in Product Development Best Practices Report and Training Magazine. He has been cited as an expert on performance under pressure in the Wall Street Journal and quoted in many other publications. Timm received his B.S. in Psychology from Arizona State University in 1981 and his MEd in Educational Technology from Arizona State University in 1985. He has presented or consulted in a dozen countries.
