Book/novel about Project Management, Business Consultancy, and of course Smartsheet and WBS!
ENGLISH:
Dear all,
Until my retirement I had been a project manager for more than twenty years in the tough automotive supply industry.
Since I am now retired, I wrote a book. I found it appealing to write about project management and business consultancy embedded in a novel. And of course about Smartsheet, how to build a project plan from scratch, as well about the Work Break Down Structure (WBS)!
The book/novel is now since yesterday, Easter Sunday, April 20, 2025, in Amazon as e-book available.
But it’s just in German, sorry!
But maybe, nonetheless, you are interested in it.
Here is the link:
https://www.amazon.com/-/de/dp/B0F5P3BR19/ref=sr_1_21?__mk_de_DE=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&crid=3TE2CNPNZYZ3V&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.4k9TJa-swaqFnCFhhbvmc0ADnmfJx4DLtQ7Q70EWVBJhkE3A8_35Dzwm9xuEzAFBjpCSyO_oNQtdQkfohaxtiGasHPwUEm_Rht8CTwrTo7n0bDfqhIQhDK1BhxSdRbGKMl1P2Ldg8tOgPvhdUv3_F7Bsd4TmrEywkgYWnN-LkXzeNpv_GOrFZL1dSLCNPQA9.Vkw3Dat4dZEqy5RYyHe8q87vLMt2IXOoOgONPqixyXM&dib_tag=se&keywords=smartsheet&qid=1745223463&sprefix=smartsheet%2Caps%2C228&sr=8-21&xpid=G7nUbP6ALjlor
GERMAN:
Hallo Kollegen,
vielleicht interessiert es ja jemanden, aber ich hab ein Buch, einen Fachroman, über Projektmanagement und Unternehmensberatung, als auch über Smartsheet, geschrieben.
Das Buch ist als e-book nun seit gestern, Ostersonntag, 20. Apr. 2025, bei Amazon verfügbar.
Hier der Link:
Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Best regards
Hans Porzel
Comments
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The story:
Project Management? - Management Consulting!
The company Top Equip Automotive GmbH, short TEA, with 800 employees on three sites, is experiencing in fall 2023 a recall of one of their products. This prompts the main shareholder and partner Roland Hohenstedt to bring a management consultancy into the company. Their main task is the reorganization of the project management there. Hair-raising mistakes are exposed and some executives go overboard. Project Management (PM) is supposed to be fundamentally restructured. This means moving away from individual hands-on project managers and going towards an operational project management office, a so-called PMO. The software to be established there is not Microsoft Project, but rather the project tracking software Smartsheet, which is also used by 80% of the "Fortune 500" companies worldwide. For this purpose, the management consultancy hires a young man who studied IT, Jonathan Li, who has already gained practical experience with a PMO at another automotive supplier and is also product certified about the Smartsheet software.
At the company's Christmas party, he meets the young, nice and smart product designer Lisa Klein and they both fall in love. They meet and visit each other's parents. As well, they both go along well and value each other very much.
It turns out that Lisa also worked with Smartsheet in her previous company. The Sullivan management consultancy is based in Boston in the USA and has an office in Munich. Since Roland Hohenstedt, the partner at TEA, once studied with the CEO of Sullivan Consulting in the USA, they met without the knowledge of the unpopular and egotistical managing director, Dr. Jaschke, in the USA with APES, TEA's main customer, for whom Sullivan Consulting (SC) has also already worked successfully in the past.
The management consultancy performs their work in three phases, which also corresponds to the three months of December 2023, January and February 2024. Sullivan Consulting, especially the team leader, Belinda Gall, with her two colleagues Tony and Sebastian Sullivan, are ice-cold in their decisions. Decisions are made about people like made about livestock.
Jonathan and Lisa, who now live together in an apartment, realize with horror that the life of a management consultant is like that of a nomad. In just a few weeks, Jonathan would be supposed to leave for another customer. This triggers Jonathan to speak to Belinda Gall. She initially shows understanding, but then has resentments towards Jonah, as Lisa calls him. Belinda suggests that Jonathan should move over to TEA to get employed there, as this is also what Roland Hohenstedt's friend and the owner of SC, Benjamin Sullivan, wants from his employed consultants: "So that a perfect PM is established at TEA."
Jonah explains the Smartsheet software to Lisa from scratch. He develops formulas, structured similarly to those in Excel, which show, for example, the timing status of the projects or how multi-project management works.
A lot has already happened in the PM's environment. The CEO, Dr. Jaschke, a choleric, kicks himself out of business. The head of product development, Mr. Joseph Niederstetter, gets cold feet and puts his position up for disposal. SC proposes a very committed and capable project manager, Mr. Fedder, as new managing director. When he was asked, however, he praises Joseph Niederstetter, the phlegmatic man, as a steady rock in the raging sea of the project business. This causes Belinda Gall to remove him from the "firing list" again. Joseph Niederstetter then more or less ends up with Jonathan and Lisa in their PMO and becomes there their friend. However, the phlegmatic, who is weak in leadership, thrives there and shows enormous specialist knowledge, which he also explains logically.
But Belinda continues to toil with the two Sullivan brothers and continues to pursue the staff and the current organization at the company mercilessly. "Just establishing a PMO instead of having individual hands-on project managers ..." she says, "... is not enough." Project plans and schedules were never really taken seriously by colleagues at TEA. In order to change that, department heads must be supposed to be more responsible. 10% of the employees have to leave or get dismissed either, which creates a lot of suffering and people now see PM as necessary and not just half-hearted as before.
In addition to the Smartsheet software, which Jonah explains to Lisa in detail, he also explains what a good Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) must contain. The whole thing initially had a bump in the road when it was introduced. For example, in Sales, a list had to be introduced via Smartsheet, called "Sales Potentials", so that the heads of the distinctive departments can now also plan their resources, i.e., their staff, accordingly. Ultimately, however, all work tasks for all project teams are assigned and tracked via the Smartsheet software and it turns out that all works very well.
Of course, Jonathan and Lisa also spend their spare time together. They are taking a weekend break vacation in Garmisch. There Jonah buys engagement rings with Lisa and then they drive to the Ettal Monastery, where they get engaged in the church.
At the end of March, at the end of the consulting project, Belinda, Tony and Sebastian are throwing a farewell party. Lisa and Jonathan are also sitting at the table of the Hohenstedt entrepreneurial family. When Lisa casually mentions that she is pregnant, Roland Hohenstedt, who has now become a close friend, asks her if he and his wife could become godfathers. The story ends with a happy ending - in every respect.
