In the early 1990s I designed and started teaching a project management course for 3^rd and 4^th year civil engineering students at the University of Minnesota. I had been teaching an engineering systems course that was problem-driven and made use of project teams and used a similar approach in the project management course. I also started teaching project management and teamwork courses for graduate students in professional master’s programs, especially at the University of Minnesota’s Technological Leadership Institute; and participants in short courses for government agencies, such as the Minnesota Department of Transportation (Mn/DOT), and private companies.

When McGraw-Hill invited me in 1997 to write a book on project management and teamwork for their BEST series, I thought, What a terrific idea! Real world engineering problems require teamwork to be solved. Involving first-year engineering students in teamwork and project management as soon as possible would help them prepare for engineering practice. I immediately embraced the idea and started working on a book for them.

Along with colleagues and undergraduate student teaching assistants I had taught a introductory engineering course for first-year students at the University of Minnesota for more than 20 years. It evolved into a course titled How to Model It: Building Models to Solve Engineering Problems, which I have taught with colleagues and undergraduate student teaching assistants. We also wrote a book to accompany the course—How to Model it: Problem Solving for the Computer Age (Starfield, Smith, and Bleloch, 1990, 1994). Since the course made extensive use of project teams, I knew that a book on project management and teamwork was needed.

Karl A. Smith