Then this book might be for you. “In Search of Excellence in Project Management: Successful Practices in High Performance Organizations,” by Harold Kerzner is one of the very few books out there that can provide for needs of the executives on the subject of project management. Many executives need an understanding of project management that is a bit different than that of a project manager. While the latter needs to know the knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques she need to apply to projects in order to succeed, the earlier needs information more on how to setup the right environment at the organizational level to help projects succeed and more importantly fulfill organizational strategic objectives.

The first chapter of the book starts with a compelling and aggressive statement “Try to name one company, just one that has given up on project management after implementing it. Probably you couldn’t.” The statement shows the level of confidence this project management expert has in the science and the high level of experience he has had working with diverse industries in implementing project management improvements.

Interestingly enough, in its preface, the book starts with an implied criticism of companies mentioned in the book titled “In Search of Excellence,” by Tom Peters, by asking derogatorily, how many of these are still viewed today as excellent companies. He makes this statement to show that the way organizational performance is being measured has changed from the past, and more so today than before, companies are paying more attention to internal processes like project management to keep them on track.

The idea of the book is to look at why organizations are implementing project management, what value they got from the implementation, and how they went about it. Throughout the book, the author makes clear and strong contrasts between past behaviors and attitudes of companies as related to project management in specific and to change in general.

The book provides a nicely structured approach to maturity in project management and a definition of the different levels of maturity organizations achieve in this very important area. It also talks about what to expect at each level of maturity as far as benefits as well as challenges of implementation.

The author provides plenty of live examples from actual organizations that the writer has researched, which gives it a very practical edge over other references on the subject.

Harold Kerzner is a well known expert in Project Management and has written many books on the subject. One of his other more well known books is “Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling,” which was last published in 2005.

Within its hard cover, displaying logos of the companies covered in the research for the book, the 275 pages of text is divided into thirteen chapters and three appendices. The initial chapters provide an introduction to the subject by providing a foundation on project management, excellence, and its driving forces. Then the book talks about important concepts in modern project management like the importance of management support, training and education, project management systems and tools, and integrated project management processes. One of the nice features of the book is its focus on what it calls “behavioral excellence,” which focuses on people aspects like leadership, communication and teamwork. The appendices offer suggested readings as well as questionnaires on project management maturity and excellence.

The definition of “excellence in project management” according to the author is clearly defined in the book. To him, “organizations excellent in project management create an environment in which there exists a continuous stream of successfully managed projects, where success is measured by having achieved performance that is in the best interest of the whole company as well as a specific project.”

When it was published in 1998, project management was gaining momentum, but no where near where it is at the present time. Most of what the book talks about is still relevant today. However it can benefit from a revision that focuses more on the new trends in project management of today like collaboration, virtual teams, virtual projects, and global outsourcing. To read the book today, nine years after it was published offers a couple of extra advantages. For one, it provides a comparative look at where companies were at the time of writing the book and where they are now. It also allows companies to understand the journey to project management maturity, as it offers clear milestones for companies who are at higher levels of maturity in project management.