Project Manager

My knack for organization, planning, sequencing, and scheduling led me to an interest in the field of project management. I learned techniques through experience, read books, and over the years, I went to many classes and seminars.

In 1986, I was asked by the Church Human Resources department to teach classes on project management skills to Church employees. From August 1986 to December 1997, I taught 155 hours of classes to over 400 employees. I provided on-site training to Physical Facilities staff in Boise (June 4–5, 1996) and to the North America Southeast project management office in Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; Charlotte (November 17–19, 1997), North Carolina; and West Palm Beach, Florida (November 19–21, 1997).

On March 30, 1987, I received a Certificate for Project Management Proficiency from the American Management Association in New York City. The American Management Association later tried me as an instructor for their courses on project management—although I never ended up teaching for them.

AMACOM was so happy with my book that they asked me to write two more books for them:

Improving Your Project Management Skills (both the first and second editions). I wrote the first edition as a work-for-hire for $4,500. It was published in June 2005 and sold over 10,000 copies. I updated it for the second edition as a work-for-hire for $5,000.
Successful Project Management (both second and third editions). It was a college-level self-study course that sold for $159. The second edition was published in December 2004. I was paid an advance of $2,500 to write it, plus royalties (which were $17,452 through December 2015. 2,125 copies were sold to June 2009. I updated it for the third edition for $5,000, plus royalties. The third edition was published in February 2011.

I also published the following books through my company Century Publishing: Project Management: A Strategic Approach and Project Management Step-by-Step Instructor Guide.

I found the people at AMACOM to be enjoyable to work with, but their methods were antiquated. They still used paper and red pencil, with numerous rounds of proofing as the books were sent to content experts for peer review and as copy editors reviewed the manuscripts. That experience helped me focus on process improvements we could make in publishing Church publications.

I also wrote the following articles:

“Making Team Decisions Wisely,” published in Today’s Engineer
Bob Weinstein interviewed me and quoted me in his article “Six Reasons to Kill a Project,” published in Builder
In June, an excerpt from my book was published in USA Today, “Strategies for Managing Conflict Between Workers.”

In 1998, I spoke with the American Management Association (AMA) about teaching their Basic Project Management 6503 course. I audited the course in June. Then from July 17–22, I attended a professional development seminar for AMA speakers titled “Teaching Techniques for Accelerated Learning.” The teaching roster was full in 1998 and there was a mix-up in 1999 in that my name did not get added to the roster. After that, I did not pursue it.

On July 22, 2001, I sat for the Project Management Professional (PMP)® test administered by the Project Management Institute (PMI). PMI was the only professional association that certified project managers—similar to how the CPA exam was a professional accreditation of public accountants. It was a grueling multi-hour test. In fact, in 2001, the PMP® exam had a higher failure rate than the CPA exam. I passed the test and became a certified PMP®.

I published the website projectman.org from 2002 to 2015. I originally created it to promote the book Project Management Step-by-Step, but I expanded it to be a project management portal with information and resources on various aspects of project management.

On December 27, 2016, the Houston Chronicle published an article, “The Best Practices in Picking a Project Manager” (see PDF), that referenced me and summarized some material from one of my books.

See a list of my publications on the page Author and Speaker.