Project management techniques play an important role in the world around you. Many of the most visually imposing features of your life would not be there without effective project management.

Let us just consider one example: the aircraft you fly away on for your vacation. That aircraft is an end result of a highly complex project, probably covering several different locations and even countries. Design, engineering, manufacturing; all these could be spread around in different offices and buildings. Each of those elements is complex and may involve several professional disciplines, with safety and comfort a feature at all times.

Take away the management of that aircraft project, and then try to imagine how the resulting aircraft may have looked. Without the co-ordination provided by good management, what you would end up with, if anything, may not even look like an airplane at all. Components may not fit, or may not arrive; the wings may have been designed, but their manufacture not ordered; the wheels may be designed for the wrong size of aircraft. All sorts of bizarre things could occur, and the aircraft would not get off the ground, probably never even be half assembled.

When you get on an aircraft, you are boarding the successful result of a project well and professionally managed. But what if you changed the project from an aircraft to your own future success; and then applied some basic project management techniques to achieve a successful outcome to