Book Review: Lewis's Project Planning, Scheduling & Control
This paper offers a critical review of James P. Lewis's Project Planning, Scheduling & Control (McGraw-Hill, 1995), a how-to guide aimed at project managers. The review evaluates Lewis's treatment of core project management topics, including planning, scheduling, earned-value analysis, organizational structure, leadership, and worker motivation. While acknowledging that the book covers relevant ground and occasionally provides useful technical detail, the reviewer argues that Lewis relies too heavily on restated common-sense and borrowed concepts from statistics and psychology, adds little original insight, and writes in a verbose and condescending style ill-suited to an informed professional audience.
- Overview and General Assessment: Thesis: Lewis restates common sense with little originality
- Planning and Scheduling: Coverage of planning chapters and scheduling tools
- Managing People and Decentralized Control: Worker autonomy, decentralized management, and accountability
- Earned-Value Analysis and Organizational Structure: Project measurement tools and matrix organization design
- Leadership and Motivation: Leadership styles, Maslow, Herzberg, and motivational factors
- Conclusion: Final verdict: book adds little original value
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What makes this paper effective
- The reviewer consistently supports critical judgments with specific examples drawn from the book, such as Lewis's failure to cite studies, his elementary definitions, and his overly repetitive prose style.
- The review maintains a balanced tone — acknowledging where Lewis provides useful technical content (scheduling chapters, earned-value examples) before returning to its central critique.
- The paper connects observations about the book's weaknesses to broader principles, such as the distinction between original contribution and mere recontextualization of existing ideas.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The review demonstrates evaluative synthesis: the writer does not simply summarize each chapter but consistently measures Lewis's claims against a stated standard — whether the book adds original value, whether evidence is properly cited, and whether the writing serves its stated audience. This evaluative lens is applied chapter by chapter, giving the critique both depth and coherence.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a thesis-driven overview establishing the reviewer's core criticisms. It then moves chapter by chapter through the book's major sections — planning, scheduling, people management, organizational structure, leadership, and motivation — before ending with a summary verdict. This organizational approach mirrors the book's own structure, which is a deliberate and effective choice in book-review writing at the undergraduate level.
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.
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