Fielding graduate Jerry Wellman publishes Improving Project Performance: Eight Habits of Successful Project Teams

Improving Project Performance: Eight Habits of Successful Project Teams, Palgrave Macmillan, Nov. 2011 -- Jerry L. Wellman

Jerry L. Wellman is a consultant and an assistant professor at Midway College teaching in their MBA program. For the past two years he has worked with GE Aviation Systems in the U.S. and Europe to improve their project management training. Prior to his retirement from Honeywell, Wellman was Vice President of a business unit within Honeywell International. He is also certified by the Project Management Institute as a Project Management Professional and is a Six Sigma Blackbelt. He holds a BSEE, an MBA, an MA in Human and Organizational Development, and a Ph.D. in Human and Organizational Systems.

Overview:
The approach to project management is too often formulaic, describing what should be done and how to do it, but not adequately describing why those actions are important. Improving Project Performance outlines the what and how of project management, emphasizing why actions matter, the overall intention of the formulaic steps, and the strengths or weakness of various tools and techniques. Successful project teams must understand and focus intently on what Wellman describes as the eight essential habits of successful project teams:

-Nurture a shared vision of what is to be accomplished
-Translate that vision into a coherent set of performance specifications
-Have an integrated plan for accomplishing the purpose
-Measure their performance against the plan and their progress toward the requirements
-Allow for uncertainty
-Manage change
-Continually act to influence their future
-Over-communicate