About the Author
Alan Ferguson is the Managing Director of AFA. This training and consultancy company has specialized in change delivery practices for nearly 20 years. Starting off in project management it spread to programme, portfolio, change and risk management, P3O and a host of other disciplines related to helping organizations change. It provides training and consultancy globally, both directly and through a network of partners who use AFA training material.
Alan has been in project and programme management for an awfully long time. He was certainly looking after a collection of projects (which would now be called multi-project programme management) in the 1970s. So that means he's getting to the end of his fourth decade in this game.
His first career was as an engineering officer in the Royal Air Force. His first projects were looking after airplanes; getting them back in the air after a couple of months in a hangar. Before he left the RAF, he moved across into IT and in the late 1980s and early 1990s worked on IT projects and within so-called strategy stufies. Nowadays those strategies would be called programmes. So he really was in at the beginning of programme management.
Alan also spent a few years working in an international insurance company on IT projects and programmes. Here, and in the RAF he earned his spurs as a practising project and programme manager.
With AFA, Alan has worked with a hugely diverse range of clients in the UK, Europe and around the world. His complaint at the moment is that he hasn't done much in South America, if any of you want to invite him across there. Alan is particularly proud of the work he has done with the UN in their field missions in some parts of the world that others wouldn't dream of travelling to. When he gets back from one of those assignments he always says he has had fun. He has a very strange sense of fun!
Alan's hobbies focus around aviation in all its many aspects. You can have a look at his airplane photographs on Flickr, but if you're feeling a little braver you can fly with him in one of his powered aircraft or in the gliders he regularly flies. His other hobbies range from helping St John Ambulance, to renovating the Windmill in Dereham; the East Anglian town where he lives and where AFA is based.
If you ever meet Alan, you won't forget him. Everyone describes him as enthusiastic and challenging. Alan is originally from Belfast and likes nothing better than a bit of craic.
Dedication
This book is undoubtedly dedicated to Susan, my wife, soul mate and business partner. She has put up with me yelling at a computer for months without resigning. Don't worry, I haven't been losing my temper, I've been using voice dictation software. As Susan has walked into the room, her words have often ended up in the book. They are the real words of wisdom.
Author's Acknowledgements
First of all I'd like to thank Nick Graham, the author of PRINCE2 For Dummies for putting Wiley in touch with me.
Claire Ruston, as my commissioning editor, used all her charms to entice me into the For Dummies trap. Once I got into writing one of these books, I fear I have become addicted. Thanks Claire for breaking me in so gently.
Next I want to thank Rachael Chilvers at Wiley for holding my hand so patiently as I've dropped chapter after chapter into her mailbox.
I'd also like to thank Andy Finch, my development editor, who turned my random babblings into For Dummies-speak, and for adding a few really corny jokes.
I also want to thank my team at AFA who have put up with me disappearing into the office for so many hours. It is unfair to single out just one of the guys, but I have to mention Roni Holmes, my material production coordinator, who did a lot of the spadework on diagrams and lots of other stuff around this book.
Next I want to talk about the gang of MSP trainers I've worked with over several decades. I think you of all people have taught me most about programme management. I have to put John Vivian and Bill Shuttle pretty near the top of that list.
I also have to say a thank you to the delegates I've trained and the clients I've worked with for sharing their experiences with me. These are what I've funneled into the book, particularly in the examples.
Finally I want to mention the broader MSP community, and the people I've worked with to make MSP the world-leading programme management practice that it is. You know you are; thanks everyone.
Publisher’s Acknowledgments
Project Editor: Rachael Chilvers
Commissioning Editor: Claire Ruston
Associate Commissioning Editor: Ben Kemble
Development Editor: Andy Finch
Proofreader: Kelly Cattermole
Technical Editor: Axelos Global Best Practice
Production Manager: Daniel Mersey
Publisher: Miles Kendall
Cover Photos: © Alex Slobodkin/iStockphoto.com
Project Coordinator: Sheree Montgomery