No Surprises Project Management: A Proven Early Warning System for Staying on Track

By Timm J. Esque

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1882939042
• ISBN13: 9781882939046
• Release Date: December 1999
• Publisher: Ensemble Management Consulting
• Length: 259 Pages
• Weight: 1.04 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 0.5" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

Excellent guidance for deliverables-based project management

As an ex-Intel person, I participated in a number of "map days" to pull project plans together. Timm Esque's book documents the approach, including the "behind-the-scenes" work to prepare for these map days, to run them, and to perform the after-the-map day activities. I've used Timm's book in running map days in my current organization and in running a large IT program. I've leveraged his PAC (Performance Against Commitments) and his deliverables matrix to stay on top of the program performance and quickly identify what's behind and what's on track. In short: excellent reference!

An Excellent Book Indeed!

Timm Esque has created an outstanding book with many practical insights for project managers. I am a performance technologist for a high tech company. Timm's case studies and templates contribute to making this one of the best books that I have read concerning performance improvement in business environments. The book is well thought out and based on Timm's extensive experience in industry. Tom Gilbert would be proud (if you don't know, read the book to find out who Tom Gilbert is).

"No Surprises" is a breakthrough in project management

This is a two flight book! A coast-to-coast round trip about does it. Actually, Timm's ideas are so straightforward and elegant that it should have taken one flight, but I got into a long conversation about the book with a client on the way. The top-down, bottom-up approach is something I've been teaching for some time in my project management classes. But what Timm has done integrating human performance technology and PM is a breakthrough. The PM community often talks about "the human side" as if there are the real skills (which are very technical--the good stuff) and the touchy-feely things you have to do to glue a team together. Not surprisingly, manipulation is a recurring theme. Timm has hit the Achilles heel of the traditional approach: getting commitment. Traditionally, project management is like scar tissue: it builds up layers of protection against the inevitable re-injury. "No Surprises" reframes the whole conversation into a way of enabling project teams to self-manage the 'how's" while putting the project manager in the role of "making trade-offs visible." This is an extraordinarily practical book, filled with tools and techniques you can pick up and use right away.