Book Review: Lewis's Project Planning, Scheduling & Control

Overview and General Assessment

Project Planning, Scheduling & Control by James P. Lewis (McGraw-Hill, 1995) is a how-to guide for project managers. Lewis points out mistakes commonly made in the planning and execution of business projects. However, he relies on a large number of abbreviations and catchy phrases to overcomplicate what are essentially common-sense ideas — such as the notion that project managers should relate well to their teams, and that complex projects require planning. While Lewis does provide an overview of concepts from statistics and psychology as they apply to project management, he fails to add any meaningful insight of his own.

There is a reasonable amount of substantive content in the book, but very little of it actually originates with Lewis. The majority of the content simply restates existing common-sense, statistical, and psychological concepts and places them in a context specific to project management. Lewis writes in a repetitive style more appropriate to television advertising than to educating readers. A better author could have easily conveyed the same information in less than a third of the space.

Lewis also provides little specific evidence for a number of his points. He frequently offers anecdotes or makes vague references to "numerous studies" without citing specific sources. Such evidence is weak at best and is often a sign of poor research, or even intentional misdirection. This book reads as one written for the purpose of selling copies rather than because the author has something meaningful to say.

Planning and Scheduling

Lewis begins by defining what a project is and what a project manager does — information that is unlikely to be new to anyone who would choose to read a book on project management. He observes that project management involves dealing with people and offers such guidance as: "To violate the cultural expectations of powerful members of an organization is to invite trouble." Not all the book's content is so elementary, however; Lewis does go on to address a number of common problems and offer practical solutions.

Planning — always an important consideration in large projects — is often overlooked or dismissed as a waste of resources. Lewis explains how a lack of planning wastes far more time than planning would require, claiming the existence of numerous case studies while failing to cite any specifics. He then devotes several chapters to explaining how to plan a project, beginning with basic definitions before moving on to provide some useful, specific planning advice.

The section on planning contains helpful suggestions, such as using a mission statement to keep a plan focused on project goals, along with enough basic statistics to improve the accuracy of estimates. Lewis maintains his repetitive and over-explanatory style, emphasizing obvious points such as "an estimate is not a fact." The three chapters on scheduling are where the book begins to offer an appropriate level of detail. Lewis starts, as usual, with definitions and simple examples, but moves on to provide useful scheduling tools. He then addresses adjusting schedules to account for the resource constraints of real projects. Practical considerations include avoiding worker burnout and estimating productivity. Lewis provides specific and realistic suggestions for dealing with these issues. Having introduced the basics of scheduling, he introduces a more advanced statistical technique for estimating time requirements. At this point — more than halfway through the book — Lewis has moved from stating the obvious to presenting genuinely useful technical details.

Managing People and Decentralized Control

Lewis argues against an authoritarian management style on the grounds that it impairs both worker and manager productivity. A manager's productivity suffers because close supervision of every worker's activities is time-consuming, while workers are denied both the autonomy required to be productive and the responsibility required to be accountable. Lewis offers suggestions for helping workers maintain an appropriate level of autonomy while the manager retains control of the project, including ensuring that requirements are clearly defined for each individual and determining the appropriate level of decision-making authority each worker should hold.

Lewis is correct to emphasize decentralized control and worker empowerment. In any situation where productivity is not improved by giving workers some control over their work, those tasks would be better performed by machines. Unfortunately, many managers do expect their workers to behave like machines, which creates problems when a more effective manager subsequently expects them to think independently and take responsibility for their own productivity.

Conclusion

Lewis concludes with an example project plan: his plan to develop this book and a companion course. His plan applies the planning techniques described throughout the book and includes a number of charts and diagrams for support. The example provides a useful overview of the techniques presented and may serve as a helpful reference for anyone inexperienced in project planning. It does rely heavily on outdated software, however, and would therefore require significant adaptation for use with modern project-planning tools.