Managing Projects: For New Professionals

There are at least four factors that contribute towards the success of a project. The first is to define the scope of the proposed endeavour in order to delineate it from the other projects. For instance, a chain of superstores intended to open a new store in the down town. The project needs beginning and ending tasks to determine its boundaries and assign a particular code to separate from other projects. Secondly, the project is assigned to sponsor to initiate and accomplish the project including delegation of authority to undertake freely various decisions about the venture. Senior managers feel free to concentrate on other matters by making someone responsible. Thirdly this person applies his know how, experience and insight along with the fundamentals of project management. Finally, organizations launch a project to address a problem (s) or achieve objectives set out for the endeavour. The book has been arranged around these assumptions. Therefore, addresses the following questions: What is a project? Who is a project manager? What is project management? Why project management? What is the strategy to implement the above? The book offers old principles with different words, however, the arrangement is different from others; the supporting material is recent, and the case study is fresh. The contents are brief where emphasis is on application rather than description. For example, PERT and Gantt chart have been illustrated with examples. Thus the book is blend of theory and practice; the case study fetches glimpses of practice but theory is underpinning it. The case study itself has been grounded with theoretical support. The book is a personal guide to us because our micro projects or "to do list" never end and rarely complete on time. We often share with our students that the science is working for people especially the management sciences. Its rule, tools and techniques are applicable at individual, family, and organizational levels. So learning project management must be applied for us first but it needs clarification of key concepts about the subject than they can be applied at other levels. It coincides with the level of understanding a subject which starts with learning fundamentals, apply them to the discipline and expand it to other situations and ideally in any situation. We hope the book would serve as a starting point both for readers, practitioners and writes. We wish all of them a happy journey to accomplish their projects.

About the Author :
Dr. Javed Iqbal was born 1959 in Rawalakot district Poonch Azad Kashmir. He received his early education from Pilot High School Rawalakot; received his matriculation in 1975 and intermediate from Hussain Shaheed Degree College of the same town with distinction. He earned BBA with a gold medal and MBA (Finance) with a gold medal from Azad Jammu and Kashmir University in 1986. He was appointed as a lecturer in Business Administration in the same university. Later on he was selected by the government of Pakistan for higher studies and deputed him to the UK. He received MBA (MIS) from the University of Hull and PhD from the University of Salford. Dr. Iqbal has been working in England in various capacities: professor, director of studies, marketing advisor and academic advisor. Dr. Iqbal returned to home in 2006 and joined Iqra University Islamabad campus as an associate professor. He became the head of Department of Technology Management in International Islamic University Islamabad (IIUI) in 2012. He was appointed as professor and dean of the faculty of Management Sciences AKU (AJ&K) in March 2015. He is a distinguished teacher and world known scholar. His article title "Learning from a Doctoral Research Project: Structure and Content of a Research Proposal" has been ranked by Deakin University of Australia as the best piece of knowledge on the subject especially for doctoral students. This paper is widely used and referred all over the world; many organizations turn it into an e-book and uploaded on their websites. A large number of academic institutes had included it in the reference list for writing research proposals and articles. One professor has included it in his Hand Book of Research. Dr. Javed Iqbal wrote six books on various subjects which are taught all over the world; he published his autobiography in February 2016. All are available on www.amazon.com. One of them has been recognized by Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan as a high quality research work. He has also published 23 research articles in national and international journals. He is also a poet and compiled his collection to be published in 2016. He received many awards and rewards. He won the Fauji foundation scholarship, UGC scholarship for higher studies (Quad-e-Azam Merit Scholarship) worth $100,000. He has been awarded the "Award of Distinguished Scientist" by an international organization for his contribution in research in February 2016.