Making Projects Critical is an edited collection contributed by a range of international scholars linking the area of project management with critical management perspectives. Challenging recent debates on inherent problems in project management, the text considers project management within a wider organizational and societal context.

This book presents a new way to look at communication within projects. It combines real-world examples and practical tips with theory, research, and professional standards you can apply to any size and type of project. Communication is vital for project success. Experts know it. Industry-wide research verifies it. Yet projects continue to fail because of poor communication. As a result, stakeholders and organizations don’t realize the benefits of their projects and project teams. This book presents a new way to look at communication within projects. It combines real-world examples and practical tips with theory, research, and professional standards you can apply to any size and type of project. Gain actionable insights into identifying your audience, choosing the right tools, managing change, and handling conflict. Expand your professional toolkit with templates, activities, and resources. Develop your project communications expertise with reflective questions and recommendations. Whether you are a project manager, team member, project sponsor, or stakeholder, this book is for you. For educators, the book is ideal for students studying project management and related fields. Make your project communications a critical factor in your project success!

This fast-paced business novel does for project management what The Goal and It's Not Luck have done for production and marketing. Goldratts novels have traditionally slain sacred cows and delivered new ways of looking at processes which seem like common sense once you read them. Critical Chain is no exception. In perhaps Elis most readable book yet, two of the established principles of project management, the engineering estimate and project milestones, are found wanting and dismissed, and other established principles are up for scrutiny - as Goldratt once more applies his Theory of Constraints. The approach is radical, yet clear, understandable and logical. New techniques are introduced, and Project Buffers, Feeding Buffers, Limit Multitasking, Improved Communications and Correct Measurements make them work. Goldratt even handles the complicated statistics of dispersed variability versus accumulated variability so deftly you wont even be aware of learning about them - theyll just seem like more common sense! Critical Chain is critical reading for anyone who deals with projects. If you use block diagrams, drawings or charts to keep track of your activities, you are managing a project - and this book is for you.

How social media and DIY communities have enabled new forms of political participation that emphasize doing and making rather than passive consumption. Today, DIY—do-it-yourself—describes more than self-taught carpentry. Social media enables DIY citizens to organize and protest in new ways (as in Egypt's “Twitter revolution” of 2011) and to repurpose corporate content (or create new user-generated content) in order to offer political counternarratives. This book examines the usefulness and limits of DIY citizenship, exploring the diverse forms of political participation and “critical making” that have emerged in recent years. The authors and artists in this collection describe DIY citizens whose activities range from activist fan blogging and video production to knitting and the creation of community gardens. Contributors examine DIY activism, describing new modes of civic engagement that include Harry Potter fan activism and the activities of the Yes Men. They consider DIY making in learning, culture, hacking, and the arts, including do-it-yourself media production and collaborative documentary making. They discuss DIY and design and how citizens can unlock the black box of technological infrastructures to engage and innovate open and participatory critical making. And they explore DIY and media, describing activists' efforts to remake and reimagine media and the public sphere. As these chapters make clear, DIY is characterized by its emphasis on “doing” and making rather than passive consumption. DIY citizens assume active roles as interventionists, makers, hackers, modders, and tinkerers, in pursuit of new forms of engaged and participatory democracy. Contributors Mike Ananny, Chris Atton, Alexandra Bal, Megan Boler, Catherine Burwell, Red Chidgey, Andrew Clement, Negin Dahya, Suzanne de Castell, Carl DiSalvo, Kevin Driscoll, Christina Dunbar-Hester, Joseph Ferenbok, Stephanie Fisher, Miki Foster, Stephen Gilbert, Henry Jenkins, Jennifer Jenson, Yasmin B. Kafai, Ann Light, Steve Mann, Joel McKim, Brenda McPhail, Owen McSwiney, Joshua McVeigh-Schultz, Graham Meikle, Emily Rose Michaud, Kate Milberry, Michael Murphy, Jason Nolan, Kate Orton-Johnson, Kylie A. Peppler, David J. Phillips, Karen Pollock, Matt Ratto, Ian Reilly, Rosa Reitsamer, Mandy Rose, Daniela K. Rosner, Yukari Seko, Karen Louise Smith, Lana Swartz, Alex Tichine, Jennette Weber, Elke Zobl

The principles of practical reasoning integrated into real world applications is the basic premise behind Professors Richard D. Rieke and Malcom O. Sillars' fourth edition of Argumentation and Critical Decision Making. The most current theories and research are combined with classic rhetoric to effectively explain the necessary functions of decision making in any given situation. With an increased emphasis on critical thinking, Rieke and Sillars help connect critical decisions with audience values and conventions. Real life examples are used to illuminate the principles of argumentation, ranging from interpersonal discussions to formalized conventions of science and law. A new discussion of language and argumentation highlights language practices that have had the most impact on effective argumentation.

The issue of what defines project success (or failure) is complex and often elusive, and dependent on the perceptions of different stakeholders. In this enlightening book Emanuel Camilleri examines the key factors bearing on perceived success or failure. This book is not just about project management, it goes much deeper into the topic of project success by prescribing a project success framework. In chapters dedicated to factors such as leadership, teams, communication, information management and risk management, the author shines a light on the key behaviours in which project managers and others engage and how those behaviours predict success or failure. Practising project managers, project board members and sponsors, struggling to manage conflicting stakeholder expectations, complexity and ambiguity, will learn which factors are vital to determining successful outcomes. Finally, having highlighted the particular skills, abilities and attributes identified by the research, Dr Camilleri offers a diagnostic model for assessing an organization's preparedness for undertaking and successfully managing major projects. Project Success provides a valuable contribution to the literature on this subject, and its application delivers practical guidance that will be welcomed by project professionals at all levels.

Digital information about physical products and the availability of production tools and facilities transforms design into an open discipline

Creative and Critical Projects in Classroom Music is both a celebration and extension of John Paynter and Peter Aston’s groundbreaking work on creative classroom music, Sound and Silence, first published in 1970. Building on the central themes of the original work – the child as artist, the role of musical imagination and creativity, and the process of making music – the authors and contributors provide a contemporary response to the spirit and style of Sound and Silence. They offer reflections on the ideas and convictions underpinning Paynter and Aston’s work in light of scholarship developed during the intervening years. This critical work is accompanied by 16 creative classroom projects designed and enacted by contemporary practitioners, raising questions about the nature and function of music in education and society. In summary, this book aims to: Celebrate seminal work on musical creativity in the classroom. Promote the integration of practical, critical and analytical writing and thinking around this key theme for music education. Contribute to initiating the next 50 years of thought in relation to music creativity in the classroom. Offering a unique combination of critical scholarship and practical application, and published on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Sound and Silence, themes from Paynter and Aston’s work are here given fresh context that aims to inspire a new generation of innovative classroom practice and to challenge current ways of thinking about the music classroom.

The first edition of Making Sense of Management set out to provide a fresh perspective on management that was both broad and critical, exploring how the disruptive and constructive potential of critical theory can be realized in organizations. Along the way, it has proven to be a landmark contribution to critical management studies. As well as setting the agenda for current research, this revised edition has been written to appeal to a broader readership and open up critical theory for the general management student. New sections on HRM, brands, identity, ethics and leadership have been fully developed alongside the rest of the text to reflect the current state of play in critical management studies. The second edition of Making Sense of Management will be of interest to students and researchers in critical management studies and students on general management courses with a critical perspective.

How can your bureaucratic organization achieve world-class speed and productivity? How can you better balance your time at home and at work? How can you spend time on the things you love, while at the same time keeping what you need? Roger Wilson must answer these questions when he goes from a dead-end job at Malloy Enterprises to managing Malloy's most urgent and important project, a secret development effort code-named \"Aurora.\" As Aurora's deadline looms ever closer, Roger has to figure out how to lead his team to success in the face of Malloy's inertia. At the same time, he struggles to keep his family together and to manage a revolutionary technology that seems to have ideas of its own. The Aurora team discovers that success is only possible when they challenge the basic values that underlie their day-to-day work. Their new values, the \"Project Manifesto, \" coupled with their new critical chain scheduling approach, lead to dramatic improvements in speed and productivity. In the process, Roger's own personal manifesto takes his family and his career in directions he would never have imagined