Project Management: A comprehensive description of Theory and Practice

This work is the English translation of the eighth edition of my book on “Project Management,” which was published in 2020 by Springer Vieweg, Berlin in German language. I have reviewed the English translation for completeness and, where nec- essary, made relevant changes and additions. I would like to thank my friend and former colleague of MBB 1 -Space Munich, Ronald K. Larson (who later retired from NASA), for reviewing the English text and many figures and tables.
The business success of public and private organizations engaged in projects depends largely on the success of their projects. This results in the imperative need to introduce professional project management, which is the motto of the eighth edi- tion of my book because experience shows that poor PM can lead to high risks. Mark A. Langley, former PMI president and CEO, confirms this: “If an organization does not have a good PM, the organization is taking a very high risk in implement- ing its project goal.”
Genesis of the book: In 1978, I was commissioned by the management of MBB Space to create internal training material on the topic of “Planning and Monitoring of R&D Projects” and subsequently conducted in-house training sessions. The training material (MBB UR-396/78), initially available to participants only, was later published as a seminar handbook due to widespread interest. The seminar handbook constituted a core component for my book on project management, which was first published in 1984 by C. E. Poeschel Verlag, Stuttgart. I continuously expanded the book by adding PM methods that had been tested in practice. Thus, in a sense, the individual chapters of the book reflect my professional life.
In 2017, the seventh edition was published by Springer Vieweg, Berlin, followed by the eighth edition in 2020. From the start with the first edition, it had been my goal to describe the entire spectrum of project management tasks as comprehen- sively as possible, to impart the full scope of all activities involved and their inter- relations to each other. Thus, over the past 40 years, up to the eighth edition, there have been many additions, and the book has taken on the character of an encyclopedia.
As a target group, this book primarily addresses project managers and their teams in public authorities and companies worldwide. The project management tasks described here can be easily applied to small, medium, and large-scale projects of different industries and organizations, such as national and international government agencies, aerospace, automotive manufacturing, construction, munici- pal, chemical, and medical companies as well as social enterprises.