The idea for this book came about one Friday afternoon towards the end of a summer term. I was giving the third project tutorial of the afternoon. The first had been to a BA (Business Studies) student, the second to a part-time MBA student, and the third to a student registered on the Diploma in Personnel Management programme, and a great variety of issues had been dealt with during the course of the time involved. Nevertheless, I noticed that some of the material was common to all three students. I found myself thinking that I was repeating myself, and wanting to get through the basics as quickly as possible so that we could move on to the specifics of each particular project, which we both, each student and I, found more interesting to deal with. Unfortunately, the basics were precisely those topics which I considered essential to the success of any project. What''s more, they dealt with the sort of material which wouldn''t, on the whole, have occurred spontaneously to many students, and so it was a necessary part of my job to go through them. One or two could be dealt with by issuing a handout, and the student could be referred to the library for some of the rest, but there wasn''t a systematic written compilation of all the points that I needed to make.
