We are very pleased to present this fifth edition of Project Management for Information Systems. As with its predecessors, our ‘target audience’ fall into four groups:

• IS project managers and systems developers who find themselves responsible for managing systems projects. Newcomers to this activity will find much that will be of help to them; and we also hope that older hands will find some new ideas to help them tackle the job with new enthusiasm.
• Students of information systems and project management. Not everything can be learned from books. Oscar Wilde said that ‘experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes’, and throughout the book we have included advice based on experience gained the hard way.
• Part-time developers. Many people are drawn into the development of application systems and have no need to understand all the duties of the project leader. Selected reading can, however, help you in understanding how your activities fit into the whole scheme and will, we hope, lead to better project management.
• People working in programme and project support offices. PPSOs are now an increasingly common feature of project organizations and many people find themselves working in a PPSO role without much or any previous experience of projects or project management. There is a specific chapter (Chapter 5) on this subject and we feel that the rest of the book should be accessible to them and will perhaps fill in some of the gaps in their understanding of IS project management.