Teams work: a model for project management success.

• Author: Kreger, Larry
• Position: Improving Project Performance: Eight Habits of Successful Project Teams - Book review

Improving Project Performance: Eight Habits of Successful Project Teams

Author: Jerry L. Wellman

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Publication Date: 2011

Length: 352 pages

Price: $50

ISBN-13: 978-0-230-11217-9

Source: www.palgrave.com

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Once upon a time, records managers practiced their craft more or less independently, conjuring up requested information through methods that were perfectly mysterious to the rest of the organization. Increasingly, however, such independence is being replaced by work on project teams, where records personnel work alongside representatives from legal and IT units to meet the challenges associated with such issues as electronic records and e-discovery. Should you come to work one day and find yourself assigned to a project team, you would do well to keep Jerry L. Wellman's Improving Project Performance within easy reach on your bookshelf.

Subtitled "Eight Habits of Successful Project Teams," Wellman's book draws on his more than 30 years of experience as an engineering project manager at Honeywell to distill key practices that can create a happy ending to even the most challenging projects. While Wellman's own experience is with large-scale technical matters, the habits discussed in his book can be applied to any type of project, whether it is the building of the International Space Station or the implementation of that document management system you've been working on.

For as long as there have been group projects, there have been attempts at making them more efficient. That there is still room for improvement, not just in large-scale public works projects whose failures make headlines, but in projects of every size and type, is illustrated by the surveys cited in the book's opening chapter. Even the most conservative of these studies found that more than one-third of the projects surveyed failed to meet their original requirements on time and within budget.

Wellman's prescriptions for this situation, while not entirely new, are fleshed out by real-world examples from an experienced professional. Along with the metrics associated with project management, Wellman, who holds a doctorate in human and organizational systems, treats the reader to examples of individual and collective human psychology that can make or break a project.

The eight habits cited in the book are founded on the premises of preparation, adaptation, and communication. Regarding preparation, Wellman believes that, too often...