The Story behind the Book

The Idea

In early 1998 we identified a need at pres.co for some kind of manual, guide or checklist for the project managers and producers in the business. The company was expanding extremely rapidly and we were taking on new people every week who needed training and to whom we needed to transfer the accumulated knowledge and working practices that others of us who were more experienced had built up. For a company that was all about communications and building networked information resources (in the form of web sites and intranets), we had little time to do this for ourselves, focused, as every agency is, on serving the client first and foremost.

It was clear that it was going to be difficult to write a full guide without taking time out of work. As a first step I researched the market to see if there was a book that we could use internally as a first measure before we developed our own, more specific, guidelines. To my surprise, there appeared to be very little available of much practical help for professionals. There seemed to me to be an obvious gap in the market so I determined to put together a proposal whilst away on a 2 week holiday in Australia.

The Proposal »