Building a Project-Driven Enterprise.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: Bookshelf

Building a Project-Driven Enterprise. By Ronald Mascitelli. Technology Perspectives, 368 pages. $39.95.

It's clear in reading this book that Ronald Mascetelli has been involved in a lot of projects, and has done a great deal of thinking about what made them work or fail. He's even cited in the dust jacket as a Project Management Professional, and lists an imposing set of experiences for Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, NASA and other high-profile research groups.

Mascitelli writes well, and he's particularly good at spotlighting the foibles that many company projects seem to evince: too little planning and too few resources, especially at critical times. He observes that executives sometimes fail to prioritize for their subordinates because they don't want to create excuses for failing to complete all the work put in front of them.

But the bulk of Building a Project-Driven Enterprise deals with specific...