Race Through the Forest: A Project Management Fable

Imagine working for an organization mired in the way we've always done things for almost 100 years. When executives (and twin sisters) Flora and Fauna Forest disagree on the best approach to successfully manage Forest Industries' two most strategic projects, the competition begins. Fauna believes that success breeds success and selects her favorite flashy salesman, Biff Haire, to manage Project Birch. Flora supports a slow and steady approach and chooses Barry Tortisse, an excruciatingly methodical accountant to manage Project Hickory. If you've been spending your time reading business fables that focus on little mice, fairy godmothers, and big whales to point out obvious management principles but don't leave you with much to apply to your job the next day, Race Through the Forest is written especially for you. Designed for both novice and experienced project managers, as well as executive sponsors, Race Through the Forest steps you, the reader, through every step of a project, from initiating each project with a purposeful business case, to planning a project that couples strong task definition and coordination with intelligent resource assignments, to executing the project with meaningful and honest status reports. The reader will take away useful ideas in managing work projects successfully.

Timothy L. Johnson is the president of Delta Project Solutions, Inc., with two decades of experience in project management, systems thinking, organizational diagnosis, business analysis, creative problem solving, and team facilitation. He has held project leadership roles ranging from multi-billion dollar class action lawsuit settlements to training video production, from major software transformation to strategic design. He is certified as a Project Management Professional and currently teaches MBA courses at Drake University in Operations, Organizational Behavior, Project Management, and Business Creativity. Timothy is the author of a number of books on office politics, project management, and systems thinking. He resides in Des Moines, Iowa, with his family. This is his first book with Tiberius Publications.