Main description:

Project management is recognised as a core competency across health and community services environments, yet it can be challenging for new project staff and practitioners to balance the needs of stakeholders and ensure the best outcome for everyone involved.

This wholly revised edition of Project Management in Health and Community Services presents the tools and techniques for effective practice, offering practical problem-solving strategies for managing projects based on real-life scenarios. The expert authors use case studies and examples from the field to illustrate topics such as the project life cycle, project planning, execution and evaluation, risk management, handling change and building effective teams. This edition also features a new chapter on the importance of incorporating evaluation into project design and implementation, and how evaluation can impact on future project design and development.

Written by highly experienced authors and underpinned by the latest research, this is an essential resource for anyone studying or working in health and community services.

Contents:

How to use this book
Chapter 1: Why project management?
What is a project?
The project life cycle
Projects in health and community services
Research for this book
Project management challenges
Model for success

Chapter 2: The industry, the organisation and project success
The industry: complex, regulated-and still dynamic
Project capability in organisations
The project Management Office
Projects in government departments
The project portfolio

Chapter 3: Understanding project management
The terminology of project management
The project life cycle
Differentiating projects and programs
Project management methods
Project management tools
Project management resources
Project management skills and careers
Project management courses and professional development

Chapter 4: The initiation phase: what do you want to do, and why?
Where do good ideas come from?
Getting to project goals
Goals, purposes, problem statements and benefits
Project scope and strategies
Turning ideas into projects
Planning and analysis methods
In praise of opportunism
Responding to grants and tenders
Offering project tenders

Chapter 5: The project planning phase: what will you do, and how?
Why plan at all?
The project charter
The project plan
Planning for project assurance
Project structures
Planning for human resource needs
Risk management
Issue management
The quality plan
Communications planning
Managing project change
Organisational change management planning
Planning project logistics
The project information system
Planning for evaluation
Tips for conducting project planning

Chapter 6: Planning for evaluation: assessing project
performance
What is evaluation and why do it?
Types of evaluation
Outcome evaluation
Evaluation approaches and design
Evaluation in practice-challenges and learning

Chapter 7: Planning tools: scheduling, budgeting and the
business case
Work breakdown structure: tasks, sequencing and timing
Estimating time and using scheduling tools
Budgeting
The project business case

Chapter 8: The implementation phase 1: making it happen
Getting started
Leadership, motivation and teamwork
Achieving sustainable change

Chapter 9:The implementation phase 2: controlling, completing, closing
Control and monitoring during implementation
When things go wrong: getting back in control
Project completion
Sustaining project outcomes